REVIEW: NO TIME TO DIE (2021)

Run Time: 165 Minutes
Rated: PG-13
What To Expect: A targeted, symbolic castration

Woke

That pretty much sums it up in a movie where 007 is a black female, Q is gay, spiteful jokes are made about the intelligence of white males based on their race, and treacherous cowards who betray humanity are Russian.  This is a movie that is so preoccupied with ramming home these virtuous signals that it doesn’t even bother to tell a story, despite having three hours to do so.

The film has the depth of a Fast & Furious movie, but with less sense and more frowning.  Instead of villains, we get vague references to their existence, with scant information about even their names, let alone what truly motivates them.  A full hour passes in the movie,  before a villain is even really spoken about, someone bent on poisoning people with a deadly gas.  And even then, foreknowledge gained from other Bond movies is apparently necessary to appreciate… so much for ‘revolutionizing’ Bond for a new breed of viewer.

What else do you expect from a film production which instead concerned itself with literally, actually, bringing prominent feminist ‘advisors’ in to make sure the movie was on the correct political trajectory?  No time for script doctors, with an eye for lousy pacing and terrible characters?  Is it all just wanton propaganda now?

Lashana Lynch, talking about appearing as the first black female 007, said her casting would ‘push the needle forward‘, in terms of representation… are we here to lecture or make an entertainment motion picture?  Clearly the former, because indeed, this is also how it is being taken by the mainstream media.  In their review for the movie, The Guardian, one of Europe’s biggest newspapers pointedly asked this as their first question in their review: ‘How is the sexism?‘, confirming that not only was the movie made with the intention of selling politics, but the glowing reviews have received it with the intention of grading it politically.

This one was chosen deliberately, Bond, to symbolically neuter.  With that in mind, I’d prefer to use the word spite, rather than woke.  Resentment, of what Bond used to be, is another word — it’s written all over this hate letter to screen masculinity.  Pity too, ’cause it has the occasional decent action scene.  Look ’em up on YouTube and heed my warning… do not bother.