Review by Thom

No Time to Die 2021

Saw this in cinema last night, slept on it and can now share my thoughts.

In typical Bond fashion, NTTD is a blazing-fast ride from beginning to end that doesn’t bore for even a moment. The biggest positives for me were its humor, its sound design (Zimmer delivers with a much more modest OST than we’ve heard in his well-known bombastic projects), the acting (Craig is versatile, charming and disarming) and it had some of my favorite scenes in Bond films ever. That whole Italy sequence up until the title track starts is phenomenal and especially that scene with Bond and Madeleine in the bulletproof car. Another high for me was the scene leading up to the interrogation between Bond and Blofeld, even if its climax left me a little unsatisfied.

Less positive for me was the plot. I’m not even talking about the ridiculousness of the weapon in itself, but more about the quick acceptance of Bond’s fate at the end. These mad scientists came up with an out-of-this-world weapon, but it suddenly is a bridge too far to find an antidote for it? This wouldn’t normally bother me as much, but with this ending it really seemed like they wanted to have the film end a certain way only to afterward find ways to get to said end neatly. I also did not really feel Malek’s villain. Maybe I missed it, but I did not really get why he wanted to fulfill his plans. There was a little too much left in the open, for my taste.

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