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I didn't mind that bit honestly, considering it's feigned submission so he can stealthily draw his hidden pistol. It certainly served its purpose.
LOL what on Earth are you talking about, Safin was threatening his 5 years daughter.
This only has to be explained to a layman.
Which leads us back to the original question. Why does Bond have a child???????? That’s like a Rocky movie where Rocky isn’t a boxer. An Indiana Jones movie where instead of a whip he uses a bamboo stick. A Terminator movie without cyborgs. Die Hard without McClane.
I also thought that the bit where Bond and Ash stop fighting and look at each other was also too long. A beat would have been long enough - no way do I buy the idea that CraigBond was fought to a breathless standstill by the Book of Mormon!
The film could've used one good, lengthy fight scene in general. That one with Ash was over too quickly for my tastes.
Yes, the only thing I prefer in SP: a longer fight. The fight with Ash was good but very short (30 seconds more, please). But I would also like it when the apologising in front of Safin would beca bit shorter as described by @Creasy47.
That endless machine gunning grew pretty tired to me in the Cuba sequences. That's probably my only negative in those, though, as they're pretty perfect otherwise.
The fight scenes were definitely too short. Needed a humdinger like the Hinx fight. Other than that I don't have any complaints about the film. Love it more with every viewing.
A couple more punches would have been good 😁
He should have started hitting him over the head with the motorcycle
No Time To Die: The culmination of everything wrong with the Daniel Craig era.
From the End of 2015 to the end of 2021 fans of James Bond had to wait six years for thee fifth and final film to star Daniel Craig in what in my honest opinion, I find to be the worst Bond film ever made.
I honestly don't know where to begin. It's no secret on this forum I used to be a fan of Craig and his movies but over these six long years I've had time to rewatch and re-evaluate his movies and for the last 3 or more years, I've grown to no longer enjoy them. Bond to me always meant escapist entertainment. An unstoppable hero who could beat all the odds no matter how hurt he was or what was thrown at him. A man who could go on adventure after adventure and always come back alive. With the newest film No Time To Die. This changed everything.
So NTTD begins where Spectre ends. If only It pulled a DAF and forgot the last film existed. But alas we continue the adventures of Bond and Swann in a relationship that still even after half a decade has passed feels forced and has no chemistry between the two leads. After a not so convincing montage to show how in love Bond and Madeline are it's time for Bond to forgive and move on from Vesper...again. You'd think after Quantum of Solace, Bond had put that to rest. However in this new continuity heavy era of Bond everything has to be connected like the wall of an investigation room. After one hilarious explosion later Bond falls for the easiest trick in the book. Nice to know Bond is still as dumb as he was in Skyfall. After a poorly acted scene of rage Bond decides to dump Madeline on a train and forget all about her. I should probably talk about the DB5 chase. It was okay. It didn't really wow me since every trailer showed it off.
This is starting to drag out so I guess I'll talk about what I didn't like about this movie. Once again Bond is the dour, grumpy sourpuss that Craig always plays Bond as. The tagline for the movie should have been "This time he's grumpier!" I get it. People in this age loved their damaged and unlikable heroes. It's very much of the times but after 15 years and 5 movies in a row, I find it very stale and boring. I like my Bond suave, charming and able to be vulnerable without being a joyless sour grape.
It was nice seeing Felix again. Jeffery Wright played him beautifully. It's a big shame they killed him off. Wright deserved much more than that. Safin was easily the weakest villain since Dominic Greene. He was unintimidating and bland. His name is stupid too. He's basically Silva 3.0. EON needs to really move on from crazy Joker knockoffs with mommy and daddy issues.
M is the true villain of this film. After his optimistic anti surveillance state stance in Spectre, Mallory has gone full on hypocrite and developed Heracles. The most
overpowered doomsday weapon in the Bond universe since Mooraker's orchid gas globes and Icarus. Hugo Drax and Gustav Graves would be proud. How the British Government allowed the head of the secret service to develop such a weapon on their own soil is baffling. Mallory should be under suspicion for even thinking of the idea.
I didn't really care for Nomi. The character didn't add anything to the story. She came off as insecure and unprofessional. Behavior unbecoming of a 00 Agent honestly. Anyone could have played the character and I wouldn't have liked them to be honest. Paloma on the other hand was at least respectful of Bond and saw him as an equal without resorting to one upmanship.
Giving Bond a child seemed rather pointless and only served to be something for Bond to lay down his life for. Honorable yes, but not earned. It doesn't help we only knew Mathilde for a short time with barely any connection to her father. Lastly, I hated Bond's death. I knew it was coming and didn't care. It's something I never wanted to see happen to the character and here it is. I should be thankful it didn't happen to a Bond I do care for so there is that I suppose.
Watching No Time To Die was a painful chore to sit through. It hurt the legacy of a character I have loved dearly since 1997. I've had a burning passion and lasting devotion to this character for as long as I remember. This movie was like pouring water on a fire that burned for almost three decades. It makes me regret watching it honestly but I just had to see the movie myself. To say I truly saw it with my own two eyes. I suppose I deserve it like some here would say. But it's only cemented the love I have for the original 20 films in the canon. NTTD has soured my enjoyment of the Craig era as a whole so I don't intend to ever revisit his Bond films again. It's a shame too because Casino Royale showed his era had lots of potential but unfortunately each of his entries pressed the reset button and we saw the same story arc repeated over and over again s. Bond of yore suffered tragedies and loss but he moved on and kept fighting the good fight and had a reason to live. With Craig's era done, the future of Bond is uncertain.
James Bond will return but will it the James Bond we all know and love or will it be another experimental Bond that will be an even further departure than before. My expectations are pretty low to be honest.
That's all I have to say about No Time To Die. It was everything in a Bond movie I didn't want to see. It didn't leave me shaken or stirred. It left me cold and defeated. It's not a movie I plan on revisiting. Once was enough.
0/10
For me, Safin was the weakest villain of the Craig era, certainly much worse than Greene. I really like the background of the character, but when he takes center stage in the last part of the film, I don't really enjoy watching him. It's both in the writing and the acting.
At least I felt NTTD, like its immediate predecessor, brought back a healthy dose of fun and humor that I had sorely missed before. I also felt Craig's acting improved considerably after Skyfall.
The Craig era was a substantial change from what came before, even if some of its elements had been explored to some extent in previous films. There had been major changes in tone before, from FRWL to MR, from LTK to DAD, but the Craig era played with more fundamental aspects of the films, in my opinion. I enjoyed NTTD but I'm absolutely ready for a big, big change. Here's hoping it happens and suits our fancies. But if it doesn't, what the hell, I'll just do my Bond fan game one day.
As you said, hopefully the next era will be something we all can enjoy. :-bd
I was pretty disappointed in Safin myself and would also consider him the least of Craig's villains. I had really high expectations for the character as Rami Malek appeared to be a quite fascinating, intelligent, and animated personality in interviews. In the film, he does little more than mumble about how he's Bond's equal and some vague plan about making the world a better place by apparently indiscriminately releasing a nano-plague through selling to the highest buyer. Try as I might, I can't make sense of what Safin really wants, besides money I guess. But apart from his motives being vague, I just don't find much to appreciate in Malek's performance. Even Waltz's Blofeld was more animated and more interesting. Likewise Mathieu Amalric, whom I always enjoyed as Greene.
I do hope we'll be in for some gratuitous escapism!
It's tempting to imagine how to rewrite that scene where Bond and Safin talk, and clarify and improve all that muddled stuff Safin says. To me, it would be better if he said he has lived full of pain, hate and resentment since he was orphaned as a child, and he feels that life is full of suffering and regrets, so it's a waste of time to bother living, therefore he is going to kill absolutely everyone, including Madeleine, who awoke something deep in him all those years ago, and with whom he's going to spend his final hours. He's saving humanity (and her) in his own twisted way, an invisible god sparing the world from the misery of existence. No comparisons between Bond and Safin's killing methods, no talk about being tidier, no talk about evolving the world.
Maybe you'd have to make some changes at earlier points of the script to make everything consistent, but his motivations would make much more sense, and would be more impactful.
Malek's performance is pretty flat. He is very good at playing a total nutcase, but that's not enough. His presence is uninteresting; there's nothing really distinctive in how he behaves (not the same as what he does). He never gets too excited, he barely gets exasperated at one point when talking with Bond. He's too one-note. And a real "rapport" is never created between Bond and Safin; I feel Safin could be talking to any secret agent and nothing would be different on his part. The script is at fault there.
I too like Greene.
It's a shame your views on NTTD have soured the entire Craig era for you.
I feel quite lucky that I really like the film. It's certainly not perfect and you raise some good points with regard to It's faults. I think I lowered my expectations with this film after the debacle that was SP. And thankfully I find NTTD far superior.
Giving Safin a morbid and completely defeatist world outlook would have been a fresh twist on the supervillain agenda and would also have given him a clear and understandable motive, however twisted. All he wants to do now is die in the company of his imagined family (Madeleine and Mathilda) while taking the rest of the world out at the same time. You get rid of any buyers coming to the island because what does he need money for? Instead, he's launching long-range missiles loaded with Heracles around the globe, and Bond has no way of stopping the launch. So he does what he can: he ends Safin and gets Madeleine and Mathilda off the island.
Then it becomes about Bond doing the impossible again—stopping a missile launch when there's no way to stop it, which is straight out of Fleming's Moonraker. He takes out Felix's cigar and stands under the center rocket and prepares to light up amidst the fumes. Right before he flicks the flame on, he smiles wistfully and says, "The boy stood on the burning deck" (in reference to something mentioned earlier in the film). Then Bond takes the rockets out along with himself, saving the world one final time. That's a sacrifice an audience could easily and immediately have understood and an ending for Craig's Bond I could actually have fully gotten behind.
Edit: Better yet, Bond gets Madeleine and Mathilda off the island first. Then catches up with Safin and tries to get the launch codes out of him. To ensure his twisted plan succeeds, Safin kills himself by eating one of his toxic plants (putting them to some actual use in the film). Then we get that wonderful scowl of Craig's and he can go ahead and put a couple bullets in Safin anyway like he does in the film before heading for the rockets.
Now that you mention Safin's death, during one of my watches of NTTD, I thought that when lying on the water, it could have been a interesting touch to see Safin take out the noh mask and put it on for the last time, like a kid holding on to a doudou for comfort. It might have made him appear a little too infantile, though, so I'm not entirely sure I would have gone for it. But it could have been quite creepy.
A logical background for Safin was written for the film. He inherited his family's pharmaceutical company, IIRC, which explains how he financed his plans. Unfortunately, as you suggest, his background is never explained in any substantial way, apart from a newspaper clipping in Norway that nobody is going to read unless they pause the film.
Makes you wonder how many aspects of the story are conceived in great detail but are unfortunately absent from the finished film.
Still, I appreciate the script in other areas, as they wanted to do a lot of things with the film --finish the Craig era, do something meaningful with Blofeld while still leaving room for a new villain-- and actually made much of it work.
The noh mask was a very cool touch in that opening sequence. You're right, it certainly could have been brought back again later on, beyond showing it to Madeleine in her office, and it would have made Safin's demise even more chilling. It is odd though why they went with this Japanese motif for the character (the noh mask, the kimono he wears during the climax) when Safin clearly isn't Japanese himself and there are no other connections to Japan in the film. I suspect those were leftovers from earlier drafts, like the toxic garden, where the film was perhaps more closely tied to the novel YOLT.