At the risk of stating the obvious, this article contains spoilers. A lot of spoilers. If you haven’t seen ‘No Time To Die’ yet, I recommend you pause here and return once the lights go up!
What was it that made me desperately want ‘No Time To Die’ to be a memorable Bond movie? Because heading to cinema for the first time in over a year, I felt a real yearning for the film to be an experience worth the long wait enforced by the pandemic.
Was it my waning middle aged prowess wanting to find some vicarious rejuvenation in the exploits of cinema’s most famous alpha male?
Was it homesickness for Britain, a cultural nostalgia for the milieu of Bond that I would feel in much the same way that Spaniards living in London might anticipate a new Pedro Almodóvar movie.
Or was it simply a need to see something British be competent, effective and in control of things again? A character who is often shaken, but never stirred. During a period in which the United Kingdom seems to be in a perpetual crisis, wouldn’t it be great to watch 007 save the world again, one vodka martini at a time?
On all three counts, ‘No Time To Die’ delivered while also providing something I wasn’t expecting from a huge, action blockbuster: a full blown, classical tragedy. Because this Bond movie was an elegy for something that we may never see the like of again. Having played the role across a generation during which so many attitudes and values have changed, in his final outing Daniel Craig turned the most famous secret agent in the world into a truly heroic figure. The Bond of ‘No Time To Die’ is a fallen idol, doomed by guilt and pride to make mistakes that only death can redeem, a catharsis he is granted in the final moments before the curtain falls. The only thing missing off Sophocles’ checklist was a dysfunctional relationship with his parents and in Bond’s foster brother, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, trapped inhumanly in a Lecter-like dungeon, we had the next best thing.
But who are the bad guys really?
Today we live in a polarised world where your perceptions of who the bad guys are can often depend on your political point of view. This dilemma is now leaching into cinema, even into a Bond movie where such things are meant to be as clear cut as a Savile Row suit.
I thought the only weakness in the new film was its lack of a villain. ‘No Time To Die’ is not so much a movie about Bond’s struggle with an evil adversary, as his struggle with his own demons and the dubious and dangerous morality of ends justifying the means. Far from being the destroyer of worlds, Rami Malek’s Safin was just an intermediary, opportunistically exploiting the awful possibility of World-Domination-As-A-Service by latching on to a weapon created by the British government and subverting it for genocide. Less evil genius, therefore, and more software pirate with a planet-sized grudge.
His cruelty towards the young Madeleine and later her daughter, Mathilde, felt a lot more unsettling and immediate than the assertion that he could be about to wipe out unknown millions. Given that Heracles was actually an off-the-books project cooked up by MI6 chief, Mallory, contemporary audiences reeling from Covid might be forgiven for wondering if this was a case of art imitating life. In the end, Mallory got off lightly for his catastrophic mistake while Bond was left to pay the price.
One of the important aspects about Bond’s degrees of separation from the British establishment is it allows us to question our own ethical codes. We may not always like the things that Bond does, but like Nathan Jessop, there are times when we need him to be there. Herein lies the dichotomy of masculine power and authority in a post-Trump world. Can’t live with it but may not be able to live without it either. As the real world separates into accountable power (elected governments) and unaccountable power (corporations or rogue nations), is ‘No Time To Die’ suggesting we can trust nobody? Or is it saying that legitimate power needs some kind of oversight to keep it honest? In which case, how legitimate can it really be? These are rich seams for future Bond movies to explore.
The title of the film itself can be read two ways: ‘no time’ as in a limited amount, or ‘no time’ as in choosing a bad moment. But in the end, there is more than enough to resolve matters: the film is almost three hours of momentous and genuinely nail biting action and ultimately, Bond’s instinct of when the moment has finally come to depart is as perfectly synchronised as his trademark ‘walk and shoot’ entrance. Indeed, there is a scene late on where he enters a tunnel and is momentarily framed in exactly the same way as if viewed through that famous gun barrel, only here it’s like an omen, a chronicle of his own death foretold.
A woman’s work?
Amidst all the online furore about whether the next 007 needs to be black or a woman, it seems to have been overlooked that this is a James Bond movie in which, for the most part, Bond spends most of the time not actually being Bond. For the first act, 007 is retired and trying to deal with guilt of having falsely judged the two women who loved him: Vesper Lynd and Madeleine Swann. And having returned to MI6, for a time, his 007 designation still remains with his successor, Nomi, until she voluntarily relinquishes it back to him.
In some respects, this was one of the few wrong notes in an otherwise pitch perfect roundup of all the loose ends of Craig’s recent outings as Her Majesty’s most trusted secret servant. The film makes it abundantly clear that when it comes to dealing with the threats of the modern age, we still need these lethal men and women to guard the walls. Inherent in the threat posed by the subverted Heracles weapon is a warning that for all their flaws and moral risk, a secret agent with a licence to kill and all the moral quandaries that brings, is a more effective way of dealing with evil than irreversible technology with inhuman logic and purpose.
So what better way to hand over the baton from the analog to the digital eras of Bond movies than to cast a strong, independent black woman in the title role for a few years to mark the divide? At some point, there will be no more Ian Fleming yarns left to spin into plot threads whose links to the original 007 origin stories will surely be close to non-existent. Why not just make a clean break and start making films in a Bond universe in which what matters is the licence to kill and not the holder of it?
Ah, if only. Pre-release, this was described as the moment that Bond goes woke, but I didn’t feel that completely happened in ‘No Time To Die’. True, the casual misogyny and banter was mercifully dialled down to the point where Bond and Nomi were more like two squabbling co-workers than lovers whose chemistry sets aside their differences. And unlike Roger Moore’s final outings where we had to squirm through his “romantic” scenes with actors almost thirty years younger, the post #metoo chemistry between Bond and crack American CIA agent, Paloma, was more like a father’s paternal pride in his daughter – if that daughter turned out to be capable of wiping out a hit squad without so much as a broken heel.
Nomi, for all her backstory successes – becoming the youngest double ‘O’, for example (some might say being black and female and getting any kind of high ranking job in MI6 would be the real achievement in real life) – is ultimately relegated to sidekick status. And in emphasising her talents, she is made to look like a pushy contestant on ‘The Apprentice’. When asking, repeatedly, what happens to her 007 code name once Bond has returned, the men in the room pointedly ignore her. The question is never answered.
Meanwhile, Paloma turns out to be the most lethally efficient dispatcher of bad guys in any recent Bond movie. And yet she is still forced to self-deprecate herself – “I get nervous…..I only had three weeks training” as countless women in countless workplaces are obliged to do, lest she appear to be getting ideas above her station. This is actually quite a funny sequence and one surely influenced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge who was part of the writing team. But bringing Fleabag qualities to the world of international espionage forces the joke back in on itself.
And was it just me, or did the matter-of-fact way in which she shot, stabbed and maimed about a dozen assailants in as many seconds all the while chuckling slightly to herself suggest an agent well on the way to developing a personality disorder? If Bond is supposed to be woke now, these are some of the questions I feel we should be asking!
To boldly go: where next for 007?
But watching Bond not being Bond made you realise why in spite of all the theorising, straying too far from the template is a very difficult move to pull off. If 007 is in absentia, somebody has to step up and take care of business. In terms of being badasses, the women in the film are more than capable of doing so but I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing.
When Paloma was centre stage laying waste to Safin’s men in Cuba, for all its kick ass female empowerment (which is, of itself, a very good thing), it was like watching another of those highly octane, video game, action movies that Netflix churns out. Nomi, although competent and brave, was largely invisible in terms of us seeing her true mettle as an agent. In the final showdown on Poison Island, her main contribution was to shoot an unarmed man for being obnoxious and verbally abusive, the symbolism of which is almost worthy of an essay in itself. And then she got to shepherd Madeleine and Mathilde off the island to watch from a safe distance as the missiles rained down. I think Lashana Lynch did her best but the writers, for all their excellent work on the script overall, didn’t give her much of an audition for the top job. Nomi ended the movie as she began it: a promising young woman with a licence to kill and bright future in her chosen career. If we want the realism of woke, would you really want to spoil a person by making them 007’s heir? More likely, you’d retire the number and implore them to be their own, better, self.
To some extent, like it or loathe it, a Bond movie has its own fundamental grammar whose linguistics are very difficult to reshape. There will always be an opening sequence fantastical enough to rewrite the rules of cinema; next, silhouetted title credits that probably cost more than the first four series of Game of Thrones; and don’t forget to add black tie, casinos and the world’s most famous drink. There will be Bond villains, Bond cars and Bond gadgets, and even though there may be less talk of Bond girls these days, there will inevitably be a moment when the classic Sixties theme tune blares out in all its decadent, unapologetic and unreconstituted swagger. Arguably no other character in cinema can provoke such an instant hit of nostalgia and cultural recognition simply by straightening a cuff link or stating his name. Certainly no other spy hero comes remotely close. Bourne, Jason Bourne? Please.
I vaguely remember the dour convolutions of the Bourne movies: labyrinthine thrillers built upon the idea of a man with no memory, an agent without an identity. But that would never work for a character whose identity is to be an icon and the ultra realism of highly trained assassins smashing each other to pieces in brutal, choreographed carnage has lost its sheen. It’s also very hard to imagine Bourne in a tuxedo. Perhaps he did and I don’t remember and that’s really my point. Bond is about more than just the symbols, all present and correct.
People say that if Doctor Who could be played by a woman, there is no reason why 007 could not be either. But this overlooks the fact that part of the Time Lord’s DNA is to regenerate and change both appearance and personality. When different actors play Bond, in theory, they’re essentially the same person. Can an actor, with a different ethnicity or gender, assume the part now that Craig has moved on? I think the first is possible but without wishing to trigger feminist anger, I’m less sure about the second.
A key part of the appeal of any Bond film is the repetitive originality that keeps us coming back for the same thing we’ve seen a dozen or more times before. A black actor could certainly give a different and thrilling reinterpretation of what it means to be an outsider and personify the sense of exploited exclusion that is at the heart of 007’s character: being admired for what you are, rather than who you are. But I still find it difficult to imagine a female in the role even though women are undoubtedly excluded and exploited in society, and even though women can be just as resourceful and courageous.
Because for Bond to be Bond, he actually does need to be a bit of an arsehole, a man behaving badly in a way that women rarely do. Far from being a character trait to expunge, flawed masculinity (note: flawed, not toxic) is part of the DNA of the character, which we’re prepared to forgive because in the final reel 007 always saves the world whatever the personal cost. In so much as this quid pro quo is so clear cut, I don’t think we’re ready for the ambiguity of a she/her or they/them 007. Whenever I think of a non-male Bond with the same insouciance and attitude, I can’t see much further than Kristen Stewart’s Sabina in ‘Charlie’s Angels’, and great though she was as a character, Sabina wasn’t James Bond.
Stirred yes, shaken no.
So back to the point about the Bond universe. Some critics have been very upset by the fact that Bond does the one thing that he isn’t supposed to do: die. In this respect, they have taken the title of the movie very literally. But I think the time is now.
Hollywood has a long history of rebooting franchises, and humanity a far longer one when it comes to the retelling of stories, so I think we can cope with the end of this phase of 007. It’s true that throughout his long career, from the moment he opened his cigarette case at the casino table in ‘Doctor No’, to the point where he stood bruised and broken atop the missile silos in ‘No Time To Die’, Bond had never taken the ultimate one for the team. Crossing the final threshold would suggest that big changes are afoot.
Rather than cinematic sleight of hand to pass the character from one white male to another in a seemingly never ending story, Eon have set their stall out on future-proofing 007 for the ages. The next Bond will have to be both new and exist in a different space and time. Difference is the only possible way to explain death and remain believable. For that reason, it will be astonishing if the new James Bond isn’t a black actor and it wouldn’t trigger a Roger Moore raised eyebrow if the character didn’t become white again in the future. From now on, within the limitations I’ve outlined, it’s the franchise that matters, not the figure who personifies it. And for that reason, yes, perhaps one day a she/they will be 007. It wouldn’t upset me or make me any less willing to go and watch the movie. I just don’t think it will happen yet although it would be a brilliant reimagining to tackle. Just as we get the politicians we deserve, who reflect our needs and wants of a given moment, maybe our action heroes personify the same?
Bond may be gone but this is no time to die. The world is still a very dangerous place and we still need spies who love us in spite of not always being very lovable themselves.