Oh, and about that ending: there are two major, major twists that it would be unfair to reveal here. It’s not hard to imagine a tear or two was shed, even among the stony-hearted film press corps, in the darkened cinema as No Time To Die’s credits rolled. It works bluntly, it’s extremely rare for a film of this scale to be this affecting. The effect is to give No Time To Die not just the emotional heft that it can drum up in two and a half hours (though that’s not inconsiderable), but also to really drive home how this is the end of a decade-and-a-half long project, the culmination of Daniel Craig’s utter reinvention of James Bond as a deeply troubled man with a fraught personal history. You might have to have seen Spectre to understand the plot of No Time To Die, but you have to have seen Casino Royale – and ideally remember it, at least broadly – to understand this film’s emotional heart.Īnd so fans might have been waiting six years to see this film, a year and a half of that unplanned, but in a sense, they’ve been waiting a full 15. It all plays to the psychological traumas laid down in Craig’s first outing. Throughout the film, characters including Nomi remark that it’s not in Bond’s nature to be able to trust someone – that he’s a killer, and nothing else. When Bond has to save a major character from drowning, there’s an eerie similarity to that moment where he tried to – and couldn’t – save Vesper from her suicide in 2006. Swann’s own personal history is deeply tangled up with Safin’sįrom then on, the throwbacks keep coming thick and fast. Later, when she takes down three heavies soundtracked by a salsa-inflected version of the Bond theme, you can’t help but wonder where the James Bond who used to drown people in bathroom sinks has gone. And about midway through the film, Ana de Armas steals an entire crazy sequence in Cuba as an ingenue CIA agent named Paloma (“I’ve done three weeks’ training!” she tells Bond, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed) who takes Bond to the world’s most 12A orgy. Entirely disarmingly, Hugh Dennis – as in, from Mock The Week – pops up as one half of a double act of government scientists alongside Industry’s Priyanga Burford.

Elsewhere, Fukanaga leans heavily into the comedy side of Bond (not a problem in itself, of course) and cheesy Russian accents abound. No Time To Die features a gas attack on a black-tie event that is oddly free of tension, as well as a brief chase that functions more as a Range Rover advert than a sequence loaded with any true peril. Tonally, there are some moments that don’t quite jive.

Female cast of casino royale sequel