Review | No Time to Die movie review: Daniel Craig as James Bond bows out in fitting style – this is a throwback to the muscular Bond of the 1960s

007 is brought out of retirement to face off with a villain linked to old nemesis Blofeld in Craig’s gritty last turn as the British Secret Service agent

Co-scripted and directed with style by Cary Joji Fukunaga, No Time to Die is packed with action, emotion and grandeur. Ana de Armas stands out as a CIA agent

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Daniel Craig in a still from No Time to Die.

Published: 10:35am, 29 Sep 2021Updated: 12:59pm, 30 Sep 2021

4/5 stars

James Bond is back, at long last. Daniel Craig’s final outing as Ian Fleming’s British Secret Service agent has been a long time coming, delayed by the pandemic for almost eighteen months. No Time to Die lands with a bang, as explosive as 007’s trusty Walther PPK pistol.

It brings with it an adventure packed with emotion and a grandeur that feels apt for a franchise that, for the first time in its history, concludes an interweaving story spanning the entire arc of Craig’s five outings as the character.

Picking up some time after 2015’s Spectre, Bond is now with his love Dr Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), holidaying in the stunning Italian town of Matera. Even now 007 is still looking over his shoulder, unable to trust even those closest to him.

A shocking event leads him to part from Madeleine, with the plot moving on five years and Bond now retired from MI6 and alone in Jamaica. It’s only when his old CIA friend Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) comes calling, asking Bond to track down a Russian scientist, that he’s sucked back into his old life.

Co-scripted by director Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective), the plot sees him face off with Safin (Rami Malek), a scar-faced villain with a deep connection to Madeleine’s past and to SPECTRE, the evil group overseen by Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), now languishing in Belmarsh prison in London.