Contains Spoilers!!*

Rating: ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭒ 

No Time To Die was a fantastic movie, giving you top-notch action and tear-shedding drama. A lover left in despair, a fatherless daughter yet to understand, and an introduction to what seems to be the first female 007. No Time To Die gives you a heartbreaking ending to the Daniel Craig era, but a prospective look into the future of the 007 legacies. 

The movie starts with a romantic vacation in Italy with his new lover, Madeleine Swan (Léa Seydoux). Bond visited a tomb rigged to explode, which led to Bond being chased and forced into a shootout. Without a doubt, Bond escapes with ease but ends his relationship with Mrs. Swan, suspecting her of setting him up. 

Five years later, Bond is retired in Jamaica, where he is encountered by a former CIA colleague, Felix Leiter, and his new associate, Logan Ash. Both attempt to get Bond’s help in a top-priority mission to recover a scientist, Valdo Obruchev, kidnapped in a top-secret bioweapon facility. Bond refuses to help before meeting Nomi (Lashana Lynch), the MI6 agent who holds Bond’s former role as agent 007. Bond and Nomi travel to Cuba. They discover that Obruchev was kidnapped because of his access to nanobot technology that spreads a life-ending virus by specified DNA that can target individuals, families, and whole ethnicities. The two agents also discover that the evil organization, Spectre, was the one who kidnapped the scientists at the order of a new villain, Lyutsifer Stafin (Rami Malek). Overall, the film was a fantastic showing, even with the few areas needed to be built upon.

The movie’s main villain, Lyutsfier Stafin, was a brilliant character who single-handedly manipulated the world’s most dangerous organization to help him complete his world domination. His character development throughout the movie gave everyone a taste of the need for revenge from years of pain and suffering. Although his character is a great villain, he was not the proper villain for the last movie of Daniel Craig’s Bond. The sending off of James Bond needed a villain who has a very high level of intelligence and is physically equal to Bond. The villain needed for No Time To Die should’ve resembled the antagonist in Skyfall (2012), Raoul Silva, portrayed by Javier Bardem. Raoul Silva was a former MI6 operative who sought revenge on the organization and almost individually took down Britain’s whole secret intelligence agency using his hacking expertise and physical capabilities. No Time To Die needed Raoul Silva; Lyutsifer Staffin only gave us some of that.

Along with the need for a better antagonist, there was a need for a better introduction to our new 007. The envisioning of the future 007 movies sees Lashana Lynch’s character, Nomi, as nothing more than a placeholder for the anticipated revival of the Bond generation in the form of Mathilde Bond. Despite this, to earn the place of Agent 007 means you are more than qualified. However, we only saw glimpses of Nomi’s physical capabilities when she sought out the scientist in Cuba and when she and Bond went to takedown Stafin on Poison Island. Other than that, showings of her aptness to be a top agent are non-existent. Furthermore, adding sequences of Nomi’s competence would have made a much finer introduction and a smoother transition from one 007 agent to another.

Daniel Craig has delivered picture-perfect Bond performances since 2006, and No Time to Die has forced us to wave farewell. Not everything lives on forever, no matter how much we wish it could, but that does open new doors for new beginnings.