It’s definitely a crowded crew of espionage experts from around the world, but these talented supporting performers are given surprisingly little to do other than push the plot forward to its inevitable ending. Lynch feels like a self-aware nod to controversy around the casting of Bond, which is cool enough, but then she’s not given much of a character to make her interesting on her own. Seydoux and Craig have shockingly little chemistry, which was a problem in the final act of “Spectre” that’s deadlier here because of what’s missing from the final act, and a character is added into their dynamic in a way that feels cheap and manipulative. Ana de Armas pops up to give the film a completely different and welcome new energy in an action sequence set in Cuba, only to leave the movie ten minutes later. (I truly felt the MCU-ness here in that I expect her to reappear in Bond 26 or 27.)
As for villains, Christoph Waltz returns as the slow-talking Blofeld, but his big scene doesn’t have the tension it needs, ending with a shrug. And then there’s Rami Malek as the superbly named villain Lyutsifer Safin, another heavily-accented, scarred, monologuing Bond baddie who wants to watch the world burn. The polite thing to say is that Malek and the filmmakers purposefully lean into a legacy of Bond bad guys, but Safin is such a clear echo of other villains it’s as if the next Avengers movie had another big purple guy named Chanos. Craig’s Bond deserved a better final foe, one who’s not really even introduced into the narrative here until halfway through.
What keeps “No Time to Die” watchable (outside of a typically committed turn from Craig) is the robust visual sense that Fukunaga often creates when he doesn’t have to focus on plot. The opening sequence is tightly framed and almost poetic—even just the first shot of a hooded figure coming over a snowy hill has a grace that Bond often lacks. The shoot-out in Cuba moves like a dance scene with Craig and de Armas finding each other’s rhythms. There’s a riveting encounter in a foggy forest and a single shot climb in a tower of enemies that recalls that one-shot bravura take from “True Detective.” In an era with fewer blockbusters, these quick visceral thrills may be enough.
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