No Time To Die

 

No Time To Die is Daniel Craig's final performance as Bond, and is a fitting end to his tenure playing the famous international spy. It wraps up loose ends from his previous movies, and embodies everything that has been good about the Craig-played Bond movies. It is gritty, raw, and emotional. You can't help but to feel attached to his character as he goes through the highs and lows of being an international spy. When Craig was originally announced as the next Bond actor, I had neutral to negative feelings about it, mostly because I had no idea who Daniel Craig was. Despite some of his Bond films being not so good, when thinking about his Bond portfolio, Craig is probably the best actor to ever play the character. Connery will always be the most memorable Bond actor, and that is fine because history is on his side. But Craig's performances in No Time To Die, Casino Royal, and Skyfall were more memorable than the movies themselves. On a side note, I will always have a soft spot for Pierce Brosnan as Bond as he was the actor when I was introduced to the character as a kid. But Brosnan is third in my list of best Bond actors, behind Craig and Connery.

I want to briefly talk about the premium rental experience. I'm more into movies than I used to be, but luckily I've been able to watch most of the movies on my list on Disney+ without any rental fees. However, we decided to go ahead and rent No Time To Die at the premium rental fee of $20. On the surface it seems outrageous, but with the challenges of finding a babysitter and time to go to the theater, plus the likely additional fees of eating dinner at a restaurant, $20 isn't so bad to stay at home and watch the movie from the couch. It is likely something I will do for future movies as well.

I'm not going to spend anytime on the plot of this movie. However, I will say a lot happens to the main characters by the end of the film, so it will be interesting to see where the franchise goes from here. Whoever plays Bond will have big shoes to fill. My only complaint about the film is that there was too little of Ana de Armas. Despite being heavily featured in the previews, she was only in one scene in the entire film and really didn't play much of a role in the story, which was disappointing. Otherwise, this film was quite good and a fitting end to the Craig-era Bond films.