{"id":6245,"date":"2022-07-31T21:25:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-31T21:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=6245"},"modified":"2023-01-22T21:59:20","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T21:59:20","slug":"media-no-time-to-die-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=6245","title":{"rendered":"FiLM REViEW: No Time To Die, 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The title font is good\u2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Myeah\u2026 Not great, to be honest. The Bond Franchise is, like so many these days, flogging a donkey carcass that died a long time ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What this means is that it\u2019s kind of lost, and all that remains is a collection of accessories: exotic locations, action sequences, the movie stars employed for it, and labyrinthine plots that are ultimately the most disappointing element of the whole collapsed souffl\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t buy Craig as Bond. At all. I like that he\u2019s ruggedly odd-looking. But, aside from looking pretty good, he has zero charisma. The best Bonds – Connery and Moore – literally exuded charisma like sweat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like so much modern cinema, it becomes a series of set-piece action scenes that are impressive on the technical and adrenaline fronts, but utterly bereft of emotional involvement. I simply don\u2019t care <\/em>about anyone, as nobody seems either remotely real, nor even pleasingly cartoonishly intriguing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Matera, Italy. Fab location!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So ultimately I simply don\u2019t care about the story, or the \u2018characters\u2019, and all that\u2019s left is the hi-octane stuff. And that\u2019s just not enough, is it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now I\u2019m coming to the biggest problem of all. This is a gutless, neutered version of a vision of masculinity that was born in another era, and whose charm lay very much in lots of assumptions that simply don\u2019t get past the guardians of PC who make this sort of \u2018by committee\u2019 pap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess this conclusion also shows up my demographic? If you\u2019ve ever read any of Ian Fleming\u2019s Bond novels, you\u2019ll know that the movies with Connery and Moore, whilst different (esp. with Moore\u2019s more comic take), do<\/em> capture the preposterously presumptuous macho visions of Bond\u2019s creator, whose creation is sick with self-love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t need to be a privately educated scion of a self-appointed aristocracy, or have that Tory sense of self-righteousness and entitlement that Bond and the \u2018establishment\u2019 he serves have, and represent, nor approve of the multilayered series of assumptions that underpin the whole \u2018Cold War\u2019 worldview in which most of the old stories unfolded, to enjoy the real \u2018vintage\u2019 Bond. In fact the daftness of it all is part of its period charm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rami Malek as Lyutsifer (!) Safin. Ugly is evil!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, for all the limply emasculated Bond-age, and the \u2018empowered\u2019 females, of whatever ethnicity, some of the most toxic and unattractive ideas of modern culture (present in the \u2018real\u2019 Bond, as well), esp\u2019 around casual, even comical, violence, do<\/em> pass the moral filters that rob this version of Bond of any balls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I kind of want to say that the only actor who comes off even half decently (or should that be indecently?) – and that\u2019s only speaking relatively – as he isn\u2019t given much to work with, is Rami Malik. Who does, almost<\/em>, make a Bond villain worthy of the original lineage. But even that claim is, in reality, too weak. Look at how Bond eventually offs him. Turns out Lyutsifer is a pathetically easy push-over!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Cristoph Waltz, who I liked in Inglorious Basterds <\/em>and The Hateful Eight<\/em>, is really pretty lame here, as Ernst Stavros Blofeldt. And pretty much all the other characters, from M and Q to Moneypenny, and the many supporting characters, are just blank cyphers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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