First Bond To Die.

Daniel Craig’s last ever Bond. Is it too gauche to say he goes out… with a BANG?

NO TIME TO DIE is a handsome robust conclusion to the Daniel Craig Bond adventure, something the Bond franchise has never done for its other leading spies. After wrapping SPECTRE (2015), with Daniel’s admission that he would rather eat glass than make another Bond, it seems fortunate that producers at EON Productions (Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli) could coax one last entry out of him, to close the final chapter respectfully. Although it seems Daniel was just in a mood during that particular interview, as his respect for the icon he stewarded for the last 15 years is apparent in this story that almost mirrors his real life reticence.

Bond (Craig) is enlisted by the CIA’s Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) to kidnap a biologist named Obruchev from Spectre, whose DNA-based weapon can wipe out whole swathes of humanity. Bond’s own spy agency MI6, works against him to kidnap Obruchev for themselves, employing a newly-minted 007 – a black woman, no less (Lashan Lynch, knocking down two woke birds with one stone). And playing against them all, a mumbling stranger (Rami Malek) with the phonetically saucy name of Lyutsifer Safin.

James Bond: spy about town.

NO TIME TO DIE mirrors Craig’s real life in that he wanted out of Bond – and in the movie, Bond is off the grid with his lady-love from SPECTRE, Madeleine (Léa Seydoux – another first for the Bond series: a continuing love affair across movies); then Craig signed up for another Bond, but the real world pandemic shut him out – while in the movie, Bond wants back in to MI6 but his cantankerous boss M (Ralph Fiennes) shuts him out; in the real world, speculation soars on Craig’s replacement – and in the movie, Bond has been replaced by another double-oh!

This last point has the internet abuzz that EON Productions is setting up Lynch as a “female Bond” – but stop that fretting, misogynistic mother’s-basement incels. Yes, casting Lynch stinks of the new reverse-sexism of “girling up” traditionally male movie roles (GHOSTBUSTERS, THOR, OCEAN’S ELEVEN), but it becomes apparent that Lynch is not here for the long haul; she is merely a device to illustrate “Bond losing everything” – even his spy identity – so that his hero’s journey will be all the more epic.

Yet it still stinks of pushing the envelope when it is hinted that Q is gay. The “Q” used to stand for Quartermaster; now it seems to stand for Queer… If you writers (director Cary Joji Fukunaga, with co-writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade) want to create a new gay character – go nuts! – but why fuck with 60-year-old canon for the sake of appeasing tweeting Karens? Why not shoot the whole shebang and make the next Bond a non-binary quadriplegic bi-racial muslim midget? Oh, I see one of the writers is Phoebe Waller-Bridge – no doubt the one responsible for all the woman-whining in the script (my summation based solely on her portrayal of that feminist droid on SOLO. So sue me).

The cold open is 23 minutes long (that’s the length of a First Act!), finding Bond on the ancient cobbled streets of Italy (exactly where Michael Corleone went to hide out). Bond languidly promises Madeleine, “We have all the time in the world”– Uh-oh, the last time Bond heard that Louie Armstrong song (ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, 1969), his wife was brutally murdered. This time, it’s the other way ‘round…

While both try to move on from their pasts, they find that people from their pasts don’t share the same zen. (Again like Michael: “Just when I thought I was out – they pull me back IN!”) Assassins force Bond onto a bike (the stunt up the staircase and over the courtyard wall is Steve McQueen in GREAT ESCAPE – times 10!), and then into his tricked-out Aston Martin – with the guns and smoke and spiky little mines – but the upshot of all the machine-gunning and musclecar-drifting is that Bond now doubts whether Madeleine betrayed him or not. And the scene of him putting her on a train saying, “You’ll never see me again!” is heart-wrenching!

We fade into opening titles, with Billie Eilish whispering the song No Time To Die (with no silhouetted naked women — damn you, Phoebe Waller-Bridge!).

5 YEARS LATER

The Obruchev plot kicks in. It always amazes me that in any movie where the smart scientist is being pursued, his formula/invention/weapon only resides in HIS brain. Guys, ever heard of flash-drives, trusted colleagues, or even the damn Cloud? Like my I.T. guy keeps telling me: MAKE A COPY OF YOUR WORK. Smart like squirrels.

As with all Bond adventures, it’s big and bold and European, first teaming Bond with a stunning slit-skirted MI6 agent, Paloma (Ana de Armas – last seen with Craig in KNIVES OUT 2019). In Craig’s first (CASINO ROYALE, 2006), when asked by the bartender, “Shaken or stirred?” his retort, “Do I look like I give a damn?!” was to buck convention – but now, in this final entry, to keep the legacy rose-colored, his drink order for Paloma and himself: “Two vodka-martinis – shaken, not stirred.”

Besides making thirteen-year-old boys wonder how Paloma’s jumblies don’t fall out of that lowcut-no-back-thigh-slit dress, her short cameo as an action heroine shows us how woman empowerment should be done – her every move sensual, from dragging Bond into a closet to suit him up, to inserting his ear bud; from giggling about being a naif on the job to kicking ass and wielding an automatic machine gun. There’s nothing more attractive than a powerful woman who keeps her mouth shut about being a powerful woman.

It’s great to see Ben Whishaw as Q again (if only Desmond Llewelyn had this much meaty screentime! Although getting the old-school curmudgeon to acquiesce to man-love would’ve been a harder proposition), and find ourselves wondering which of Craig’s crew will remain across screen Bonds. And it is very sad to see Jeffrey Wright take his final bow as Felix (the longest-recurring Felix – 5 movies – with David Hedison far behind with only 2 appearances).

Bond reconciles with Madeleine, and discovers her strange connection with Blofeld…

I’m really disappointed in Christoph Waltz’s portrayal of Blofeld across the Craig Bond series. If ever any filmmaker was going to recapture Waltz’s stone-cold menace from INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, then surely casting him as one of film history’s greatest villains should have done the trick. Alas, what little menace he mustered in 2015’s SPECTRE (his first appearance as Bond’s nemesis, Blofeld) has been leached from this entry, as he mustache-twirls for five minutes while in cuffs, and is then dispatched quite offhandedly.

Blofeld’s oomph-Bond-Gimmick was his scar over his eye, Donald Pleasance sporting it for maximum mad scientist effect in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967). Here, they’ve Hollywood-ized the scar, making it an inauthentic non-eye, clearly the result of greenscreen prosthetics, and losing all menace entirely. Barbara Broccoli – you had Christoph Waltz! And you blew it!

Though the story is more cohesive than any entries from Sean or Roger, the plot is diluted when the movie mishandles its actual major villain – Malek’s Lyutsifer Safin – who is the engine behind the Obruchev plot, but doesn’t appear until well into the second act, expositing his retcon connections with Madeleine, with his face on Quarter Deformity. (No cute star goes Full Deformity. Though his burned face is meant to inspire the same body-horror as Blofeld’s scar, they’re not gonna risk that bankable cutie-pie mug with any real ickiness.)

Like every great morally ambiguous villain, Safin wants to save humanity by ending it (my kinda guy!), “We tell each other lies about the fight for free will, but… we want to be told how to live – and then die when we are not looking. People want oblivion. And a few of us are born to build it for them.” He tells Bond that they are not so different: “We both eradicate people to make the world a better place.” Ah yes, again with the Demon est Deus inversus – the Devil is God upside down – the hero and villain are two sides of the same damaged coin… Hence, his name – Safin believes he is opening the world’s eyes to evolve (Lucifer = “light-bringer”).

In the film’s final showdown, Safin does what every Bond Villain should have done for the past 60 years – shoot Bond point blank… but then, instead of a kill-shot, Safin does what every Bond Villain has done for the past 60 years – start talking.

– – – – – SPOILERS – – – – –

 A poetic ending, a live-by-the-sword parable. Though we never want our hero to die, I must admit, if Bond had to go, this is a most satisfying way – while saving the world, while sacrificing himself for the greater good, while wishing his loved ones “all the time in the world”…

We discover – as Bond does – a daughter of Madeleine’s. Mathilde. Striking blue hawk eyes. Is she or isn’t she… a Bond Girl? Whomever she is – SUCH A CUTIE! You thought Lexi Rabe was cute with her “Love you 3000” to Iron Man; you thought Abby Ryder Forston was cute playing with Ant Man, well Lisa-Dorah Sonnet is Cuteness x 007!

At one point, Mathilde realizes she’s lost her bunny doll, her “Dou Dou” – and in running to escape the facility before it blows, Bond finds it and tucks it into his belt. We are conditioned to those saccharine endings, where Dou Dou might pop up from behind a table, to Mathilde’s delight, with Bond following it, to Madeleine’s delight… but Dou Dou stays tucked in Bond’s belt as he stolidly watches the nukes explode in a row towards him.

And Louie Armstrong sings us out. Except for Monty Norman’s James Bond Theme, this is the only song ever used in more than one James Bond film – We Have All The Time In The World. Suddenly taking on much more heartbreak, to what would seem the final Bond. (James Bond has never died in a film before.) But there is a bittersweet sigh of relief when we are assured this is only Daniel Craig’s final chapter, as the final titles sling that old refrain, white type on black background:

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

END

This never happened to the other fella…

Bond versus Blofeld, who threatens to wipe out life on Earth – with a virus! (That word, that concept, has taken on different worlds of meaning in 2020!)

In the cold open, the gun barrel graphic moves across screen, and a new Agent 007 bends to one knee to shoot at us!

new bond: lazenby, george lazenby

The end titles of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE promised: “James Bond will return in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE”… And this guy shows up! After Sean Connery quit the series (on bad terms with producer Albert Broccoli), 22-year-old Timothy Dalton was offered the role of Bond. He declined. 40-year-old Adam West was also considered – from Batman to Bond! We can’t even envision that now (the fruity BATMAN television series had just ended in 1968, so West’s profile was sky-high), but thankfully, he also declined. BAZOING!

After 29-year-old Australian commercial ad model George Lazenby literally beat down the stunt coordinator in an audition at producer Albert Broccoli’s office, he was contracted for 7 films as the next James Bond. (Coincidentally, 29 was the age of the classic Silver Age Batman!)

The almost 6’2” Lazenby, with the refined Aussie accent and chiseled mannequin cheekbones, must have made Australia proud. But he didn’t foresee himself going further than this one film. We can hear the regret in his voice in interviews – not regret that he turned his back on the franchise, but that his agent advised him that Bond was becoming a dinosaur; that the character’s ethos of sophistication and misogyny was becoming dated in the wake of more grounded films that appealed to the younger, incoming ‘70’s counter-culture generation (THE GRADUATE, EASY RIDER). In one sense, his agent was right, but no one could foresee that both genres could exist side by side. Lazenby also hoped that the producers would, like those other modern films, inject popular music into the soundtrack. So his hippie heart wasn’t in the character. It was just another acting job – actually, his first acting job (on a feature film).

I feel sad for Lazenby. Sad that he was badly advised by the person who was meant to be looking out for his interests; sad that he is endlessly compared to the other Bonds on this one performance, instead of growing into the role; sad at wondering what this man’s life might have been had he stuck to the double-oh.

M, Q, Moneypenny: the backbone of National Security!

M (Bernard Lee), Q (Desmond Llewelyn) and Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) are all crammed into the first scene to give us something familiar to embrace. M wonders where Bond is – CUT TO:

A redhead in a ball gown walks along a beach, clearly intending to drown herself. A shadowed man in a car watches from afar. It’s Bond, but the movie is taking it’s time to reveal him. After he saves her from the dawn surf, he introduces his wet self to her, “My name is Bond, James Bond” – and two men accost them, which Bond beats savagely. The girl flees in her car. Bond looks after her, amused, and with a wink to the camera, says, “This never happened to the other fella!”

A great, self-effacing, self-aware introduction, that slinks into the opening titles, a theme with no lyrics, because ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE was deemed too clunky to try to fit into words; silhouettes of naked females intermingling with scenes from the past Bond movies, to achieve a sense of continuity. (The “movie’s song” would be cued under the romantic montage later: “We Have All The Time In The World,” sung by Louis Armstrong (1901-1971); an ironic title in retrospect, as this would be Armstrong’s last recording before his death.)

It’s the 6^th Bond film (from the 10^th Bond novel by Ian Fleming, published 1963), and George Lazenby’s first and last Bond.

Bond comes across the redhead at a casino in Monaco, where she bends down at the card table to expose her perfect cleavage, causing Bond to spot her $20,000. Diana Rigg plays Tracy (aka Teresa or Contessa) as the daughter of an Italian mob boss, so her spoiled rotten demeanor accounts for her trying to commit suicide in a ball gown, blowing money which she doesn’t have, and using her body as collateral. (Is Rigg the first Bond Girl with fakes? Or are those naturals just PERFECT?!)

Rigg comes to MAJESTY from another successful spy series – she’s Emma Peel in THE AVENGERS (Seasons 4 to 7); the second Bond girl from that British TV show, the first was Honor Blackman from GOLDFINGER. Rigg kicked butt cutely, and was afforded more sexual respect in AVENGERS, but – as Lazenby would find out – the calcified Bond conventions don’t change overnight, so even though the producers allowed Rigg a level of toughness here (when she fights back against henchmen, or treats Bond with the same one-night-stand callousness that he exhibits toward women), she must still conform to using her sexuality as bribe and payment. Sorry, ladies, that’s how the world turns. Still, there is a very unique, poignant fate that awaits Tracy as a Bond Girl.

Bond is taken to the mob boss Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti), who beseeches Bond to marry his wayward daughter Tracy: “What she needs is a man to dominate her; to make love to her enough until she loves him…” He’s either a really progressive father, or it’s still Biblical Times inside Draco’s mansion. He offers Bond one million pounds to pound his daughter into submission. And Bond, principled as he is to Queen and Country, agrees to woo Tracy only if Draco gives him the location of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, SPECTRE’s crime kingpin that Bond has been pursuing since he was a young Connery. That seems like a fair, moral trade.

Bond visits M, who is definitely on the rag. There is a behind-the-scenes story related by Lois Maxwell: “Bernard had been drinking since about 9am. George Lazenby was on a horse and Bernard stuck a glass of wine under its nose. The poor thing reared up and kicked Bernard through some barbed wire.” A vet stitched up Lee’s gashed leg, and he made it back to the set later that day. So his injury was HIS fault, yet we sense a real dismissive hostility in M toward Bond (Really, sir, would you take that tone with Connery?), so do we surmise that Lee was allowing that personal incident to bleed into his professional performance?

M, who sounds like he’s just waiting to get back at Bond for letting a horse kick him, takes him off the Blofeld case, called Operation Bedlam, then shouts at him a little too parentally: “Your license to kill is useless unless one can set up a target!” It’s a shock to us as well. How can Bond be denied from pursuing his sauciest nemesis? Remember when Bond said, “This never happened to the other fella”?…

Bond, flailing for respect at this point, RESIGNS from Her Majesty’s Secret Service!

This never happened to the other fella.

He empties his desk, removing his tiny breather device, his garrote watch, his diving knife and belt – does he actually sit and work here or is it his gadget museum? We might think these gadgets are more connective tissue with the Bond legacy, but it’s more a symbolic act, because director Peter Hunt wanted to eschew the infamous Bond gadgets for a more realistic approach, as per Fleming’s novel. Aficionados assure us that Hunt succeeds more than any director before him.

This never happened to the other fella.

Moneypenny is shattered at Bond’s intent to resign, anxiously wondering whether any of the other double-oh agents will flirt with her auntiness – but M doesn’t accept Bond’s resignation and instead gives him two weeks leave.

Bond uses the time to woo Tracy, in a tiresome panty-cultivating montage that features the movie’s theme song, under Bond and Tracy getting to know each other by being outdoors and pointing at stuff and laughing.

Then the film takes a very strange turn…

Bond is being driven somewhere with Draco and Tracy, as if on their way to some social event, Draco rolling his eyes at Bond and Tracy making googoo eyes at each other. Bond exits, telling Tracy to keep the martinis cold for him. So they are going on ahead and he’s catching up later. Okay. Next he’s cracking a safe, copying documents, meeting with a British fop, Sir Hilary, and the next thing we know – Bond is in the Swiss Alps in the guise of the fop genealogist, Sir Hilary, meeting Blofeld! But is Tracy still keeping those martinis cold? How many days have passed? What happened to her and Draco? Does anyone care we’re in another movie now? Did George Lazenby actually do two Bond movies and squish them together?

Bond’s ancestral coat of arms sports the Latin motto: “The World Is Not Enough” (we slap our thighs in recognition…). As Sir Hilary, he’s investigating the genealogy claim of this secretive scientist up in his Alpine laboratory – a scientist that turns out to be Blofeld!

Telly Savalas is Blofeld! Savalas had a few classic movies under his belt at the time (CAPE FEAR 1962, BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ, GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, DIRTY DOZEN) but he was not yet KOJAK, to premiere in 1973. Savalas gives a rock-solid performance as a megalomaniac, but there was nothing as chilling as Donald Pleasance playing Blofeld like a fey absent-minded sociopath. I was very sad Pleasence didn’t reprise his role from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Also, Savalas has lost Blofeld’s oomph Bond gimmick – the scar tearing down the right side of his face. Not only was it icky, it also signified the right side (i.e. the good side) of his humanity was damaged.

This is another strange anomaly, because Bond and Blofeld should know each other (from LIVE TWICE). But both of them here have to slowly figure out who each of them is. And that missing scar! The producers were aware of all these continuity errors – and just ignored them.

With his kilt on, Bond walks into a room full of women. No undies required. Overlorded by a battleaxe (Ilse Steppat as Bunt), these strikingly beautiful women (including a young, unrecognizable Joanna Lumley amongst the harem) are from all over the world and supposedly subjects for Blofeld’s experiments in allergies.

After plonking at least three of them (including Angela Scoular and Catherine Schell), Bond discovers their role in Blofeld’s plan: his Angels of Death, brainwashed to spread his “Virus Omega” which causes total infertility in all livestock, grains – and people (“nothing is born, no seed even begins to sprout”). As Bond discovered, Blofeld could have done just as much damage by making people listen to these shrill girls jabber after sex.

In one sense, movie derails itself in this Alpine ruse; we’ve forgotten all about boo Tracy and bitch M, and anyway, is Bond actually going rogue on leave, or is he on assignment? It’s a muddle. And suddenly – Tracy! Bond escapes Blofeld’s lair, skis down to a village (in the worst rear projection scenes ever committed to an A-list movie!), tries to lose Blofeld’s henchmen in a festival – and Tracy ice-skates up to him out of nowhere, “You’re in trouble, darling – what’s the matter?!” Just like that. It’s like she ran into him in their own neighborhood. No surprise, no “Where the FUCK did you go?!” or “I was holding that goddamed martini for 2 days!” Just immediately slides into HIS world without any preamble. And what is she doing in the Alps?

It’s not like there’s a twist, like she’s there to assassinate Blofeld for her father’s sake, so that he can be Number One. How did this coincidence ever happen? We never find out.

Also – James lies in the straw with Tracy, declaring his love and asking her to marry him – This never happened to the other fella! – but didn’t he just bang three chicks up at the clinic? Not well-adjusted one-night-stands, but exploited, imprisoned, brain-mashed chicks that were desperate for man, therefore Bond exploited their loneliness! I guess those are good qualities in a husband…

At 2 hours, 22 minutes, we feel the length of ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. Written once again by Richard Maibaum, I can see why many Bond fans consider this a closet classic, and it is well-made for the most part, with two major demerits:

1) clusterfuck editing on fight scenes

MAJESTY is Peter Hunt’s directorial debut; he was actually editor on five previous Bond films, which is ironic, considering he let his editor here (John Glen) run wild like an ADHD child. The body of the movie is fine, the fight scenes are atrocious! They are not only cut from so many angles and faster than the eye can follow, but cut to the point where the action is LOST; as an example, cutting to a shot after the punch has connected, but no shots of the actual contact, so we only see the follow-through and not the strike or even the lead-up. Either Hunt couldn’t control Glen, or get enough coverage to make the scenes work. Scarily, John Glen would go on to direct 5 Bond films himself (from 1981’s FOR YOUR EYES ONLY to 1989’s LICENSE TO KILL). But this would be Hunt’s swansong as a Bond director, having attained his Peter Principle – he had risen to the level of his IN-competence.

2) laughable rear projections

In skiing scenes, the stock-car scene and the final bobsled chase scene, Hunt’s practical shots are more than adequate to convey the speed and fear of the chase. He’s got lots of coverage, enough to cut together exciting chase scenes; there are good tracking shots on the skiers, many exterior driving shots, and some very thrilling practical footage of the violent bobsled fight.

And then he keeps cutting to rear projections during closeups. And we fall out of the movie completely, as the backing screen shows the land tilting at hilarious angles, with no bearing whatsoever to the person’s closeup face, at speeds that never match the practical shots. We could blame the editor, but that’s like shouting at an ADHD child.

How did the public take ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE? It was a financial success, yet when worldwide grosses were compared to the previous Connery films, it was not as lucrative. MAJESTY grossed only half as much as Connery’s YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. And when Connery would return for the next Bond, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, that movie would also be more financially successful than MAJESTY. I know many ladies might have thrilled to this situation – but Lazenby ended up the bitch in a Connery sandwich.

– – – – – SPOILERS – – – – –

Bond marries Tracy!

This never happened to the other fella.

There’s a very sad moment at the wedding where Bond’s eternal flirt, Moneypenny, weeps openly, while looking into his eyes from afar. Which not only proves Lois Maxwell a good actor, but makes me feel bad for all the jokes I made at her expense over the years. Her auntie-love was REAL… It’s quite emotional. And then it gets even more so…

… as Blofeld, still on the loose, does a drive-by on Tracy! A new wife, a new death, a new emotion for Bond. It’s a plot point that comes out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason – I mean, why not give Bond a happy ending? – but it’s played with enough weight that we feel it in our romcom nerve.

This never happened to the other fella.

And then again, maybe it’s a caveat on why Bond should stick to blandly banging in lifeboats…

The end titles promise us: “James Bond will return in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER” … and it’s the other fella!

END