With an original release date of November 2019, it seems like it’s been a lifetime since No Time To Die has been the plastic puck on the box office air hockey table. It makes sense that a film of this magnitude would need to be seen on the big screen. After all, it’s the end of Daniel Craig’s long journey playing the famous double agent. While the film fills the classic appetite with cool gadgets, the one-liners, and everything that comes with a James Bond film, it marks the end of an evolution of the character. Could a character like this have a happily ever after moment, and would he desire that? The results might presently surprise you.

No Time To Die picks up after 2015’s Spectre, where James and Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) are on a romantic getaway marking the agent’s retirement. Finally, James Bond gets a moment of solitude after many dangerous missions with a woman he loves. But as marked by an ominous flashback from Madeleine’s younger days, sometimes the past is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. The criminal enterprise of SPECTRE is not quite extinguished yet. While James makes peace with his demons, he gets attacked – marking a dynamic car chase throughout Mexico City. It’s there he finds that his long-awaited reprieve is over, and he has to take to land, air, and sea to save the world one more time.

Director Cary Fukunaga strives to toe the line between examining the emotional ethos of Bond up to this point and the quintessential set pieces that audiences know from the character’s history. A bioweapon falling into the wrong hands has put the entire global landscape in danger. While Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) resurfaces to be the thorn in Bond’s side, complete with a philosophical antidote in a high-security jail, there’s a nefarious figure operating behind the scenes. A man named Safin (Rami Malek) has aspirations to use this weapon to bring the modern world to its knees. His face, disfigured, and internal motivations entwine with a raging vendetta for his childhood past and an unrealistic need to shape the present in his image.

No Time To Die‘s writing team of Fukunaga, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge strives to loop these films together with newer story aspects. The returning M16 team of M (Ralph Fiennes), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), Q (Ben Whishaw), together with Bond, all feel as though they’ve been through the fire with each other. M and Bond have an uneasy alliance, but respect each other. Familiar faces pulled together to go on this one last hurrah, and it feels like a family that cares for one another.

Two new characters are shown as different sides to the Bond compliment coin in the new ’00’ agent, Nomi (Lashana Lynch) and CIA up-and-comer Paloma (Ana de Armas). Nomi appears professional, confident in her abilities, and territorial when Bond comes back into the fold. Paloma, just three weeks on the job, is funny, but also very skilled. They are both introduced in two different scenarios, Paloma at a dinner party in Cuba and Nomi as more of a mercenary that helps Bond throughout the film. Both Lynch and de Armas get time to show their action prowess, albeit de Armas has a much shorter window.

The film’s two-hour, forty-five-minute runtime seems daunting, and at points, you feel it. Malek’s role is more of an airy, destabilizing presence for most of the film. He’s only really physically prominent in the last act. The dramatic aspects will be recognizable to many. Daniel Craig’s performance is a welcoming anchor. He provides both a confident gravitas and insights into a man worried about how his legacy ends. His chemistry with Seydoux will have you rooting for the best potential outcome for the couple.

Fukunaga’s kinetic set pieces, including gunfights, motorcycle chases, etc., have a brand-new tension to them because Bond has something he’s fighting for. It’s more than just an objective and target that’s handed to him – more so, the race against time feels like the franchise enduring the ebbs and flows of a developing psyche. James Bond is synonymous with pop culture, but the overall game has changed with the spy games he returns to.

When audiences come to think of the James Bond character, it’s of this cool, elegant, gadget-using, womanizing spy who has the wardrobe to match. No Time To Die is a completion of a five-movie, 15-year arc that gives the character more depth outside the almost robotic path he’s been set upon throughout his history. As Daniel Craig’s time comes to a close, his last film contains the lineage to appease classic fans, and an updated addendum to propel this character off into fresh territory.

Photo Credit: MGM/Universal