GOING OUT WITH A BANG (NO TIME TO DIE)

 

Making a James Bond movie isn't rocket science.

You need exotic locations to host rip roaring gun battles and frantic car chases.

There must be plenty of gadgets, a vodka martini and a femme fatale (or two). 

The villain should be more hammy than a Christmas gammon and should roam around a vast nuclear bunker plotting world annihilation.

Throw in a corny gag or two after some casual violence, a dazzling credits sequence and a bombastic theme song and hey presto, you have a 007 film!

Making a great James Bond movie, though, is a different kettle of fish.

It should be a technical tour de force, with striking visuals, outrageous stunt work and some laser sharp editing.

Bond should be pushed to the limits emotionally as well as physically and there should be some daring plot twists.

Sam Mendes managed to do that with 'Skyfall' and then failed spectacularly with the exceedingly dull 'Spectre'.

'Skyfall' raised the bar not just for 007 movies but the spy genre - helping Bond compete with the 'Mission Impossible' and 'Jason Bourne' franchises.

With its Roger Deakins' impressive cinematography, dazzling set pieces and intelligent narrative, it was prepared to take 007 into emotionally vulnerable places.

Prior to Mendes' film, Martin Campbell's 1995 and 2006 Bond outings 'Goldeneye' and 'Casino Royale' had made their mark and were regarded as being up there with Guy Hamilton's 'Goldfinger' and Terrence Young's 'Thunderball'.

However they lagged considerably behind 'Skyfall' when it came to narrative depth and technical bravura.

With Mendes quitting the director's chair after 'Spectre,' enter Cary Juji Fukunaga who has been tasked with Daniel Craig's final 007 outing.

After the disappointment of Mendes' previous instalment, Fukunaga's mission is to restore Bond to the top of the espionage movie pile with a thriller that can hold a candle to 'Skyfall'.

His path to making such a movie has, however, been arguably the most challenging in the history of the franchise.

For starters, Fukunaga wasn't the first choice as director.

After directing Craig as 007 in a skit featuring Queen Elizabeth II during the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, Danny Boyle took up the challenge.

Yann Demange, Denis Villeneuve, David Mackenzie and Christopher Nolan had also been touted but Boyle was an exciting choice.

However in 2018, the Oscar winning director and his screenwriter John Hodge bailed out over creative differences.

'Beasts of No Nation' and 'True Detective' director Cary Joji Fukunaga came on board and Phoebe Waller-Bridge was brought in by Craig to rework a script that Neal Purvis and Robert Wade had had a go at, injecting it with more gags and less sexism.

As Bond devotees speculated about what 007 might have been like under Boyle, it seemed Fukunaga and his writers might be on a bit of a hiding to nothing.

There were other setbacks.

During production in Jamaica in 2019, Craig sustained an ankle injury and had to undergo surgery - altering the filming schedule.

The film suffered another blow when the 007 stage in Pinewood Studios sustained damage in a controlled explosion, with a crew member receiving minor injuries.

When principal photography finally wrapped in October 2019 at Pinewood, MGM and Universal scheduled its release for April 2020, after postponing the date twice following Boyle's departure.

The Coronavirus pandemic, however, suddenly swept across the globe as the PR machine for 'No Time to Die' was swingung into action, with cinemas closing a month before its release as countries went into lockdown.

The film's release was subsequently postponed to November 2020, then April 2021 and finally September 30 of this year as the studios tried to figure out the best time to release the movie and avoid congestion with other blockbusters.

As countries have tentatively reopened cinemas during the pandemic, a big question mark has hung over whether audiences will return to multiplexes in their droves to see tentpole studio pictures.

Along with 'A Quiet Place, Part II,' 'F9 (Fast and Furious 9)' and Marvel's 'Black Widow,' 'No Time to Die' has become a test of whether tried and tested franchises can persuade audiences to leave their living rooms and go back into cinemas. 

The stakes have been so high that Reuters recently reported that Fukunaga's film will need to gross $800 million at the box office just to break even.

At the time of writing, 'No Time to Die' is making a good fist at that, generating close to $500 million.

In its fourth week of release, it has become the best performing film of the franchise in some territories like Argentina, Paraguay, Hong Kong, Ukraine and Egypt.

It is currently the second highest grossing film of 2021 across the world behind 'F9' and has eclipsed 'Mamma Mia' in the UK as Universal's biggest hit.

But how does it stand in the Bond canon?

Fukunaga begins 'No Time to Die' with a flashback, with Coline Defaud's younger version of Lea Seydoux's Madeleine Swann in Norway, fleeing a masked killer who has gunned down her mother.

The killer is Rami Malek's disfigured Lyutsifer Safin who has come to the family's hideout to avenge the poisoning of his family by Madeleine's father, Mr White on behalf of the criminal organisation SPECTRE.

Bond fans will recall SPECTRE is led by Christoph Waltz's Ernst Blofeld from the previous movie.

As she runs away from Safin across a misty, frozen lake, the ice gives way and Madeleine falls underneath - only to be spared drowning by her mother's killer.

Fukunaga and his screenwriters fast forward to Matera in southern Italy after the capture of Blofeld in 'Spectre'.

There we find Craig's loved up Bond romancing Seydoux's Madeleine but he has also arrived in Matera to confront a major loss.

The stunning mountain top town us where Bond's previous great love, Eva Green's Vesper Lynd from 'Casino Royale' was buried.

When he goes to visit her grave, Bond discovers it has been booby trapped and he just about survives an explosion and an attempt by a gang of SPECTRE killers to assassinate him.

Suspecting Madeleine has set him up, he takes her to a train station and tells her he will never see her again, leaving her broken hearted.

Five years later, MI6 is rattled when a laboratory in London where it has been developing a sophisticated bioweapon is raided by a gang who kill most of the staff.

The raiders make off with the bioweapon which was being developed at the behest of Ralph Fiennes' M and also with David Dencik's scientist Valdo Obruchev who appears to have been an inside man.

With Bond no longer on the books, M sends the new 007 Lashana Lynch's Nomi on a mission to find Obruchev.

Bond has retired to Jamaica where he is tracked down by his old CIA pal Jeffrey Wright's Felix Leiter who has a fawning sidekick, Billy Magnussen's Logan Ash with him.

Leiter wants Bond to help them track down Obruchev in Havana and seize him but his friend is reluctant.

After encountering Nomi who tells him about the raid on the laboratory that developed M's Project Heracles, he decides to throw his lot behind Felix's operation instead of his old comrades in MI6.

Bond heads to Cuba and a rendezvous in Havana with Ana de Armas' charming novice CIA agent Paloma.

Together they infiltrate a party featuring a who's who of SPECTRE operatives celebrating Blofeld's birthday - even though their leader languishes in a jail cell in London's Bellmarsh Prison.

As they scour the nightclub for Obruchev, it becomes clear Blofeld is watching proceedings from his cell and when a spotlight falls on Bond, it looks like he has been suckered into an event which will lead to his death.

M's bioweapon is sprayed from the ceiling but instead of killing Bond, it wipes out most of the SPECTRE organisation because Obruchev has reprogrammed the nanobots to kill Blofeld's comrades.

During the pandemonium, Paloma spots Obruchev and in the subsequent gun battle, they capture him, only for the scientist to fall into Nomi's hands as the new 007 gets involved for MI6.

Thanks to some nifty driving and quick thinking by Paloma, Bond and her recapture Obruchev from Nomi while she takes part in a gun battle.

Bidding Paloma farewell, Bond takes the new 007's sea plane and heads out to a fishing trawler fur a rendezvous with Felix and Ash to interrogate Obruchev.

However they are betrayed by Ash who is a double agent working for Safin and makes off with Obruchev and his bioweapon.

This sets in train a plot that will see Bond teaming up again with M and his former colleagues, Naomie Harris' Moneypenny, Ben Whishaw's geeky Q, Rory Kinnear's Tanner. 

Also working with Nomi, Bond and his MI6 colleagues realise what Safin is up to.

Inevitably Madeline crosses Bond's path as he encounters Blofeld in his high security jail cell.

Bond comes to realise Safin also wants his old nemesis dead before releasing Heracles on an unsuspecting world.

Can Bond save the planet and get his old 007 number back?

Can Madeleine be trusted?

Is 'No Time to Die' any good?

At a running time of two hours and 43 minutes, there's a real risk that 'No Time to Die' could be too flabby to sustain its audience's interest.

Fans of the franchise needn't worry.

Fukunaga, his screenwriters, cast and crew do a fabulous job - getting their pacing absolutely spot on.

They deliver all the thrills and spills you would want from a great Bond movie but they also know when to give their audience a breather.

Conscious that this is Daniel Craig's last Bond adventure, the writers and their director do a very intelligent job threading together various narrative strands from his four previous outings.

They imbue Bond with the vulnerability that has become the hallmark of Craig's otherwise muscular performance.

Everything you would expect from a Bond film is there.

However 'No Time to Die' claims its place among the very best courtesy of some stunning cinematography by Linus Sangdren, terrific editing by Elliott Graham and Tom Cross, slick costumes by Suttirat Anne Larlarb, striking production design from Mark Tildesley, stirring special effects supervised by Chris Corbould and jaw dropping stunt work coordinated by Leah Aitken.

Even Billie Eilish's theme song featuring Johnny Marr on guitar and Hans Zimmer's soundtrack work really well with a typically mesmerising credits sequence.

Fukunaga knows exactly what the Bond audience wants and he delivers it with great style.

But like Mendes in 'Skyfall,' he also makes an accomplished thriller that can stand on its own feet outside the franchise and appeal to those that are not necessarily 007 fans.

Malek makes a good Bond villain, hamming it up without completely losing control.

In many ways, his performance overshadows the normally scene stealing Waltz who is reduced to a Hannibal Lecter part in captivity.

Fukunaga and his writers cleverly borrow another horror movie trope at the start of the film with Malek's mask wearing Safin recalling Jason from the 'Friday the 13th' movies and the Ghostface from 'Scream'.

Lynch proves a good addition to the franchise as Nomi and for the short time she is onscreen, de Armas is a joy as Paloma.

It is also oddly comforting to see Fiennes, Whishaw, Harris, Kinnear and Wright back again and Seydoux does a really good job keeping the audience guessing about her intentions.

Dencik and Magnussen embrace the opportunity to be slimy villains, as does Dali Benssalah as Safin's one eyed henchman Primo/Cyclops.

However Bond films ultimately rise or fall on the back of the actor portraying him.

Craig's performance is undoubtedly on a par with 'Skyfall' - if not better.

Over the course of his five Bond films, he has moved from portraying him as a cold killer to a psychologically damaged agent with a heart.

'No Time to Die' enables Craig to go out on a high, deftly treading the lines between action, comedy and drama and never succumbing to the showboating of some of his predecessors.

With speculation mounting as to who will be the next Bond, it becomes clear as 'No Time to Die' unfolds that the task facing the actor who steps into those shoes is enormous.

Having seen Craig take Bond down a more emotionally fragile route while matching the physicality of Matt Damon's Jason Bourne and Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt, how does the next 007 reinvent Ian Fleming's creation?

Craig no longer has to worry about the character.

He and his director leave the 007 franchise in rude health.

Although if the producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson are wise, they will be pulling out all the stops to retain Fukunaga's services to manage the transition from Craig to his successor.

Why?

It isn't just that Fukunaga and his writers have delivered a great James Bond movie.

They might well have delivered the best.

Time will tell but it looks pretty damn good from here.

('No Time to Die' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on September 30, 2021)

Lokasi:

Berbagi :