No Time to Die

 

If it weren't for its length, No Time To Die might be considered the best Bond Film.  This is a beautifully made movie that stretches out too long.  It has a complex plot that is rich in detail, and it feels more realistic than earlier Bond films.  However, too much is not explained; it is hard to understand the motivation of the villains or how their plans make any sense.

Almost all of the movie's technology feels like science fiction.  The plot revolves around killer nanobots that can assassinate specific people or groups based on their DNA.  We also see a variety of Bond gadgets that don't seem realistic at our current level of technology.   As unrealistic as all this technology is, it will likely seem outdated in a couple of decades.  For example, I think that the future of biotechnology won't be nanobots, which in science fiction are typically presented as all-powerful capable of doing almost anything, but instead will be actual biotechnology using genetics and microorganisms.

There is a scene early in the film where a Bond car is shown to be bulletproof, despite having normal-looking windows.  Real bulletproof glass can be up to 3.5 inches thick.  I would not expect thin car windows to withstand a massive barrage of bullets as they do in this scene.

Daniel Craig is great as Bond.  Christoph Waltz has a really good but all too brief scene as Blofeld.  Lashana Lynch is good as a female 007, but Rami Malek steals the show as the new creepy villain.  He will be playing Robert Oppenheimer in a 2023 film.

I can't count the number of people who get shot in this 160-minute movie.  It might be a hundred or more.  Almost every minute one or more people are getting killed.  Given current events with gun violence, maybe we shouldn't glorify death on such a mass scale.

Rating:  B+.  The movie is streaming on Amazon Prime.