Circa 2005. The #JamesBond franchise was clearly slowing down and you could well have dismissed it as ‘my father’s brand’. Legends like #SeanConnery, #PeterMoore and #PierceBrosnan had made the super spy a style icon with their ability to date the gorgeous women, drive fast cars and excel at the action sequences with not even a strand of hair out of place.
2006 saw the reveal of a new Bond - #DanielCraig, shorter, stockier and blond! With muscles that were clearly the product of hard work at the gym, rather than lucky DNA, this man was dismissed by critics. Fifteen years and five years later, this man has gone on to redefine not just the brand but actually given it new meaning. The new Bond is more human, emotional to a point, grounded, has less gadgets and definitely has more broken bones! I was drawn in by his magnetism in #CasinoRoyale and for me the Bond franchise was reinvented forever!
Q just re-engineered the remote and Bond just needs to think of his choice of content in the mind. Pass_Me_The-Remote reviews the fifth and final #DanielCraig bond film, and the twenty-fifth official 007 movie, now playing in theatres #NoTimeToDie. This is an epic swansong for the man who has held sway for fifteen long years with his gym membership intact.
#NoTimeToDie starts off with Bond grieving at the grave of his woman in #CasinoRoyale Vesper Lynd, somewhere in the Mediterranean. His holiday is torn asunder as former girlfriend Madeleine Swan (#LeaSeydoux) and her daughter held to ransom by a heavily accented, slow speaking bio-terrorist Lyutsifer Safin(#RamiMalek). He is holded up in a World War II island somewhere between Japan and Russia. The little girl has blue eyes and for the first time ever the franchise addresses the possibility of fatherhood for Her Majesty’s premier secret service agent. Safin kills Madeline’s mother in a short flashback in the beginning in an act of retaliation.
Bond has in fact retired from MI6 but is contacted by the CIA agent Felix Leiter (#JeffreyWright) and his colleague Logan Ash to help find the scientist Obruchev who has been kidnapped by Safin. Bond’s replacement at MI6 and the new 007 Nomi (#LashanaLynch) tell him about Project Heracles, a bioweapon containing nanobots that infect upon touch and are coded to an individual’s DNA, rendering it lethal to the target and their relatives but harmless to to others. Bond travels to Cuba and meets Paloma (#AnadeArmas) in order to retrieve the scientist from the birthday party of terrorist Bloefield (#ChristohWaltz). They succeed but Ash turns out to be a double agent and escapes with the scientist. Q (#BenWhishaw) and MoneyPenny (#NaomieHarris) set up a meeting for Bond with Bloefield in prison. A series of events lead Bond to the island where Safin is holding Madeline and her daughter. In the final sequence, missiles hit the island and in a franchise that has never done this before, it is time to say good-bye to Bond!
The film is directed by a new director #CaryJojiFukunaga and the screenplay team consists of him, #NealPurvis, #RobertWade and #PhoebeWallerBridge (of #Fleabag fame). At a whopping 163 minutes, #NoTimeToDie is long and gives the film a definite touch of realism. If #CasinoRoyale and #Skyfall were standalone and fast paced, the other two films #Spectre and #QuantumofSolace were slower, sequel films and definitely less enthusing. The Aston Martin and the vodka martini (shaken, not stirred ) are still there but Bond is portrayed as a flawed human. “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them” says Bond in a line from Ian Flemin’s book.
The theme song is sung by #BillieEilish and the film is shot across Southern Italy, Jamaica and Norway. Fukunaga endows the film with a quality that is quite different from your usual Bond film and you leave the theatre with a sobering influence and a lump in your throat. The fans have started chattering about the possibilities of a new Bond. For me though, #DanielCraig is the Greatest of All Time. That chase sequence in #CasinoRoyale wearing slacks and a half shirt is distinctive of how you can recreate magic out of an iconic brand and give it a fresh lease of life. All you need is bold thinking and fertile imagination!
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