{"id":459,"date":"2022-08-10T20:53:24","date_gmt":"2022-08-11T00:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/?p=459"},"modified":"2022-08-10T20:53:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T00:53:24","slug":"no-time-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2022\/08\/10\/no-time-to-die\/","title":{"rendered":"No Time To Die"},"content":{"rendered":"

No Time To Die<\/a>, the last Daniel Craig Bond, and a great send off.\u00a0 Not that there weren\u2019t issues, of course, but mostly a step back from the cartoonish Bond from Spectre<\/a>, which I appreciated immensely – but did not expect.<\/p>\n

Why watch it now, when my expectations were so low?\u00a0 I was feeling down on myself for a number of reasons (my greenhouse plants are infested with scale and whiteflies and nothing I\u2019ve done gets rid of the damn things, my tiny vineyard is infested with Japanese beetles, ditto, and my orchard produces almost nothing (and is infested with Jap beetles- ditto), and, it seems, because all our property is in a frost pocket, that\u2019s all I can look forward to; in addition, a program I\u2019m working on is not making much progress – and my knees hurt) and was looking for something to distract me.\u00a0 Youtube was failing at that job, so I started looking at what movies I could watch that didn\u2019t actually cost more money on top of the fees we\u2019re already paying.\u00a0 Happily, the latest Bond flick is now free, so I settled in, hoping against hope it wasn\u2019t going to disappoint like Spectre did.<\/p>\n

The opening is unlike any Bond movie I ever recall seeing (I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ve watched them all at one time or another, but most non-Craig are forgettable) and I was wondering at the lack of conventional Cold Open<\/a>, where the viewer is instructed\/assured the hero is, in fact, heroic.\u00a0 NOTE: Spoilers follow!\u00a0<\/strong> A little girl is dealing with her drunk of a mother (what?) when an assassin shows up to take out her whole family, except dad isn\u2019t there, so after mom gets wasted (double entendre?) little girl proves she can handle a gun, no problemo.\u00a0 Except baddie must\u2019ve been wearing some amount of body armor, or she had the misfortune of no lethal shots, as while she\u2019s dragging the body out, baddie comes back to life and she gets away by racing across a frozen lake.\u00a0 After falling through patch of thin ice, she stares through the ice at baddie who just stands there, contemplating.\u00a0 Eventually, he shoots a hole in the ice and pulls little girl out, presumably for some nefarious end.<\/p>\n

Cut to Bond on holiday with Madeleine Swann, Mr. White\u2019s daughter from Spectre.\u00a0 When\u2019s the damn moving to start anyway?\u00a0 Madeleine insists Bond visit Vesper\u2019s grave and forgive her, then she\u2019ll tell him all her secrets.\u00a0 Bond shows up, touchingly asks\/gives forgiveness and BLAMO! her crypt blows up!\u00a0 OK, now we\u2019re on to something.\u00a0 Various assorted baddies now try and take Bond down as he races back to rescue Madeleine – only to find she\u2019s just hanging around like nothing has happened!\u00a0 Bond is, rightfully, in my mind, convinced Madeleine had to be involved in some way, despite all her protestations to the contrary, and leaves her at a train station, vowing to never see her again.<\/p>\n

Five years later, a complex containing a bioweapon development project is infiltrated and the head scientist is spirited off, everyone else killed and the place destroyed.\u00a0 Interesting, but where\u2019s Bond?\u00a0 Turns out, at some point he retired and is hanging out on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.\u00a0 Then his old pal Felix turns up to recruit Bond to rescue the head scientist – at a SPECTRE meeting.\u00a0 Bond initially refuses, but when he finds out M had a hand in the original bioweapon development, decides to take Felix up on his offer.\u00a0 A lot of interesting things happen I won\u2019t spoil here (I was hooked by this point; if you aren\u2019t, no point in continuing).\u00a0 However, a Shout out to Ana de Armas<\/a> as Paloma, not only sexy as hell, but I felt she was very plausible and realistic as a highly skilled CIA agent.\u00a0 Hopefully she\u2019ll show up in future Bond flicks.\u00a0 Except will they still be \u2018Bond\u2019 flicks?<\/p>\n

Anyway, after head scientist is rescued, only to be stolen – again, Bond is forced to work with Madeleine.\u00a0 His icy facade completely cracks and it takes him several moments to repair it.\u00a0 He then meets Blofeld – in a maximum security jail – and inadvertently kills him.\u00a0 Bond isn\u2019t sure who he can trust any longer, so goes with his proven stalwarts of Ms. Moneypenny and Q, then hies off to reunite with Madeleine, who has gone into hiding when analysis proves she put something on Bond that led to Blofeld\u2019s death.\u00a0 There, a very special surprise awaits.\u00a0 And things get really interesting.\u00a0 There\u2019s a very long and complex chase – where the baddies never make any effort to shoot Bond, making things easy for him.\u00a0 Of course, Head Baddie manages to outsmart Bond and capture Madeleine, wouldn\u2019t be much of a story otherwise, and now Bond has to go to Head Baddie\u2019s Lair, shoot a bunch of people and get his very emotional send off.<\/p>\n

Oh, did I mention that they recycle the 00 numbers and there\u2019s a new 007?\u00a0 Lashana Lynch<\/a> is Nomi, and there are some interesting interactions betwixt the twain of them and a lot of expected throw away lines regarding who gets to be called \u2018007.\u2019\u00a0 Frankly, I expected so little of No Time To Die after the Spectre debacle I was barely aware not only was the new 007 black, but a chick as well.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have any real opinion either way, if she can kick ass as well as Bond\/Craig I don\u2019t care.\u00a0 There was no point where I felt she was inadequate or some sort of Woke statement, she felt natural and exuded capability, so I won\u2019t have any issues watching a \u2018Bond\u2019 movie with her as the star.\u00a0 I hope she hooks up with Paloma; maybe Paloma can be Felix 2.0 (Felix also gets \u2018retired\u2019 during this flick).<\/p>\n

The only real huge objection I had was fairly trivial in the grand scheme of things, but did pop me out of the story.\u00a0 In part 2 of the opening, when Bond and Madeleine are on holiday, he\u2019s driving on some twisty turny roads along a cliff and is _fully_ riding in the wrong lane as he goes around each corner.\u00a0 No, it\u2019s not at night, where he might see oncoming headlights, it\u2019s in daylight and while we can largely see he\u2019s safe when viewing from the helicopter (or drone), driving like that will eventually be suicide.\u00a0 Unless, I guess, the road is somehow one-way, but then why have two lanes painted?\u00a0 The second one was a ‘refrigerator moment<\/a>,’ though it actually happened whilst smoking a cigar, so a cigar moment?\u00a0 Blofeld (spoiler!<\/strong>) has been controlling SPECTRE the whole time he\u2019s been in jail.\u00a0 I find it hard to believe that a) any signal can get out of a maximum security jail and b) that MI6 would never think to sweep for such signals.\u00a0 Yes, there were plenty of other silly things, but no ice castle or surfing tsunami like an earlier Bond, or the cartoonish elements of Spectre.\u00a0 One always has to have some leap of faith and if you accept the nature of the bioweapon, I think you\u2019ll accept the rest.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, for anyone that really liked the non-Spectre Craig Bond, I think you\u2019ll be very happy with No Way To Die.\u00a0 If you loved Spectre as a return to the more cartoonish Bond, you might want to skip this and hope that future 007 movies will revert to the mean (I sure as hell hope not).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Time To Die, the last Daniel Craig Bond, and a great send off.\u00a0 Not that there weren\u2019t issues, of course, but mostly a step back from the cartoonish Bond from Spectre, which I appreciated immensely – but did not expect. Why watch it now, when my expectations were so low?\u00a0 I was feeling down … Continue reading “No Time To Die”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":460,"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions\/460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithalanwriter.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}