James Bond

No Time to Die: Do You Expect Me to Squawk? No, It Expects You to Cry

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daniel Craig in No Time to Die

The pandemic may have delayed James Bond, but can James Bond defeat a pandemic? It’s a piece of unnerving cinematic kismet that No Time to Die, the fifth and final entry starring Daniel Craig as everyone’s favorite martini-drinking secret agent, finds the erstwhile 007 racing to stop the release of a deadly bioweapon. Originally set for release in April 2020 (ha!) before being postponed roughly 35 different times over the past 18 months, this latest depiction of Ian Fleming’s tuxedoed superspy has suffered gravely on its bumpy journey to the multiplex, so much so that its fictional threat—mass distribution of airborne toxins—seems both eerily prescient (the script was completed well before COVID-19’s arrival) and oddly quaint. When compared with widespread vaccine obstinacy, performative litigation over mask mandates, and right-wing disinformation campaigns, how dangerous can a single supervillain really be?

But nobody watches a James Bond flick for the plot; it’s the man with the golden puns we’re after. Every new 007 develops his own signature—the pithy charm of Sean Connery, the jocular cheese of Roger Moore, the arch distance of Pierce Brosnan—and the Craig era has been defined by a brooding intensity that mingles, sometimes productively and sometimes awkwardly, with an emotional vulnerability. The first blond Bond has always been a capable puncher and competent quipper, but his legacy is the sting of loss that lingers over his romantic entanglements; what were once male-gaze rituals of masculine conquest and feminine adoration became, in the new millennium, something resembling genuine, mutual relationships. As the capstone to Craig’s decade-and-a-half term of service in the role of 007, No Time to Die strives to marry the franchise’s more traditional elements—the gadgets and the globe-trotting, the brutes and the babes—with its newfound sensibility of heartache and regret. Read More

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Spectre: Secret Agent Man, Haunted by His Past

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daniel Craig returns as James Bond, Agent 007, in "Spectre"

James Bond may be a spy, but he’s also a known quantity. Britain’s most daring and debonair secret agent has been gliding cavalierly across movie screens for the past half-century, consistently dazzling us with his savvy and his pluck, even as we have grown accustomed to his nonchalant displays of implausible superheroism. The sheer volume of the Bond canon—23 films, some inevitably better than others, but all adhering more or less to the same basic template—makes the prospect of a new film featuring Agent 007 both challenging and liberating. It is difficult by now to impress us, we who have watched Bond consistently outfight and outwit his foes, whether via car or plane or parachute. But familiarity can breed opportunity as well as contempt, and recent Bond pictures have illustrated the franchise’s capacity for growth, even as they have dutifully paid homage to their forebears.

Spectre, the fourth James Bond movie to star Daniel Craig (and the second directed by Sam Mendes, following his superb Skyfall), is both the most traditional and the most ambitious of his quartet. It conforms to the established formula with jovial style, bombarding us with outlandish action sequences, beautiful women, luxury cars, and exotic locations. But it also attempts to serve as a conclusion of sorts, a culmination of the franchise rebooting cultivated by the first three Craig-led pictures. The aspiration may be admirable, but the results are decidedly less so. As a classic Bond movie, Spectre is perfectly adequate, a collection of reasonably impressive moments that do little to distinguish themselves from prior entries. But as a piece of serialized storytelling, it is startlingly misguided, a poorly judged attempt to retcon the previous films into the building blocks of a larger scheme. Spectre raises itself up as the Big Bad, but it really just brings the Craig era to its low point. Read More

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From Dr. No to Skyfall: Ranking Every James Bond Movie

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Daniel Craig as James Bond, Agent 007, in "Skyfall"

For most of the franchise’s 53-year history, the James Bond films have been less like movies than systematically engineered products. Ian Fleming’s haughty secret agent was never meant to be a superstar—his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, is a brisk and brutal affair, lacking the humor and insouciance that came to define the films—but after the success of Dr. No in 1962, the producers quickly realized they had a hot property on their hands, and they gradually grew it like they were cultivating a bumper crop. Every Bond movie is nominally different, but most conform to the same winning formula, marrying outlandish action with winking charm and faux sophistication. The series’ sheer predictability is part of its point; there is an enjoyable sense of familiarity to each new entry, a feeling of participation as you wait for it to dutifully hit all of the expected beats. And there is also pleasure in seeing how different directors attempt to rearrange the same essential ingredients—the megalomaniacal villain with his invincible henchman; the hot babe with the cheesy name; the vehicular mayhem; the gadgetry and the globe-trotting; the shaken-not-stirred martinis and the groaning double entendres; the mannered introduction of “Bond, James Bond”—into a different action-adventure stew. The pop-star-powered ballads that play over the ornate opening credits may change, but the song remains the same.

At least, it did. Over the past decade, the Bond movies have indeed changed, and not just because Daniel Craig is blue-eyed and blond. They still follow the same basic template, but where earlier Bond films felt weightless and carefree, the three most recent installments have been darker and heavier, grounded in more recognizable human emotions and wrestling with the distinctly grave notions of fallibility and loss. Agent 007 remains the most supremely sophisticated spy in the land, but Craig plays him with an alarming lethality and gravity that are new to the series. This rebooted Bond still sips martinis, but he also struggles with the taste of blood. Read More

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