成人X站

SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Daniel Craig’s final James Bond movie comes full-circle

Oct 7, 2021, 5:56 AM | Updated: Oct 8, 2021, 5:25 pm

YouTube video

The 25th installment in the James Bond movie franchise may be titled “No Time to Die,” but “Too Much Time to Die” may be more fitting. Clocking in at 163 minutes, it’s a full half-hour longer than the average Bond film and it feels like it. But given this is Daniel Craig’s swan song as Bond, perhaps the thought was he had earned the indulgence.

It doesn’t make for a better movie, but it is a fitting tribute to Craig’s singular interpretation of Agent 007. His Bond films are by far the most emotionally ambitious of all of them. Now that may not be what the fans care about but the actor Daniel Craig certainly seems to.

But Bond fans need not worry. The familiar trappings of the James Bond universe are all on fine display: spectacular stunts, elaborate chases, exotic locales, sleek cars, flashy gunplay, and beautiful women in fancy clothes. And the regulars all show up as well: M, and Q, and Moneypenny.

A few contemporary touches are also thrown in. For instance, the new temporary replacement 007 is a young Black woman, and we get to hear a few sex-positive cracks from a woman’s point of view.

The villain is yet another version of the madman-out-for-revenge clich茅, as Rami Malik is playing a guy with an appropriately ludicrous name: Lyutsifer Safin. The only fresh face that makes much of an impression is actress Ana de Armas, who plays a CIA agent in Havana, Cuba. She’s a newbie agent whose playful sexiness leads everyone to underestimate her. She leaves the movie so abruptly after only 10 minutes of screen time, that she leaves Bond and the audience wanting more.

Unusual for a Bond film, the movie begins and ends not with Agent 007, but rather with Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), Bond’s love interest at the end of “Spectre.” The fact that she bookends the film signals that, for his final go-round, Craig wants to put Bond’s love-life front and center for a change. Of course, he spends plenty of time fighting off all the bad guys — Spectre, Blofeld, Safin — but when it comes to the dramatic climax, the culmination of his five-film odyssey as Bond, it’s all about Swann for him.

Bond’s inner life has never been explored as deeply as it has with Craig’s portrayal. Ever since his first Bond film, “Casino Royale,” 007 has been haunted by the suicide of a former love, Vesper Lynd. Although Bond and Swann exchange “je taime”s early in the film, Swann realizes that until he comes to grips with his grief over Lynd, the two of them don’t have a chance as a couple. (She’s not a psychotherapist for nothing.) When things literally blow up at Lynd’s gravesite, Bond decides he’ll never be able to trust Swann either and puts her on a train, determined never to see her again.

When she reappears much later in the movie, Bond’s feelings for her deepen, some might say “mature.” Quite out of character, he ends up professing the most profound regret for abandoning her and then utters the most heartfelt and straight-forward expression of love any James Bond has ever uttered. By film’s end, he’s willing to die for love. He’s even talky about it.

As odd as this may sound for the always-in-control James Bond, it is an appropriate culmination of Craig’s character arc for Bond. It’s remarkable, looking back, how much attention was paid to Bond’s emotional vulnerabilities. Vesper Lynd’s sacrificial suicide in the first film still haunts him in his fifth and that doesn’t get resolved until he can offer a similar sacrifice to Madeleine Swann. Craig’s Bond goes out with an emotional bang.

It may not be the ending fans want but, in Craig’s eyes, Bond has finally come full-circle.

Find more movie reviews from Tom here.

FILE - Joey Chestnut, winner of the 2021 Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eatin...

Associated Press

Joey ‘Jaws’ Chestnut to return to Coney Island hotdog eating contest after contract dispute

The champ is coming back to chomp. Competitive eater Joey 鈥淛aws鈥 Chestnut announced Monday he will return to compete in this year’s Nathan鈥檚 Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest after skipping last year’s gastronomic battle for the coveted Mustard Belt. 鈥淭his event means the world to me,鈥 Chestnut, 41, said in a message […]

6 minutes ago

FILE - Students walk through Harvard Yard, April 27, 2022, on the campus of Harvard University in C...

Associated Press

Judge extends order suspending Trump’s block on Harvard’s incoming foreign students

BOSTON (AP) 鈥 President Donald Trump鈥檚 order to block incoming foreign students from attending Harvard University will remain on hold temporarily following a hearing Monday, when a lawyer for the Ivy League school said its students were being used as 鈥減awns.鈥 U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston extended a temporary restraining order on Trump’s […]

7 minutes ago

Orlando residents Jakob Strawn and Nef Bayliff, foreground, reflect on the scene at the Pulse night...

Associated Press

Pulse nightclub: A haunting look inside before the mass shooting site is razed

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) 鈥 Nine years after a gunman opened fire in an LGBTQ+-friendly nightclub in central Florida, killing 49 people, bullet holes can be seen in walls while glittering disco balls and lit-up bulbs on dressing room mirrors make the venue seem frozen in time. The Associated Press and other media outlets on Monday […]

9 minutes ago

FILE - President Donald Trump throws pens used to sign executive orders to the crowd during an indo...

Associated Press

Anti-domestic violence groups are suing over the Trump administration’s grant requirements

Seventeen statewide anti-domestic and sexual violence coalitions are suing President Donald Trump’s administration over requirements in grant applications that they don’t promote 鈥済ender ideology鈥 or run diversity, equity and inclusion programs or prioritize people in the country illegally. The groups say the requirements, which Trump ushered in with executive orders, put them in 鈥渁n impossible […]

22 minutes ago

FILE - The sun sets on the lily pads and floating vegetation in the Chesser Prairie inside the Okef...

Associated Press

Mining project near the Okefenokee Swamp has stalled over a $2M permit requirement

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) 鈥 A company that has spent years battling conservationists as it seeks a permit to mine outside the Okefenokee Swamp and its federally protected wildlife refuge needs to do just one thing before regulators make a final decision: set aside $2 million for future restoration of the mining site. Sixteen months after […]

33 minutes ago

toll rates sr 99 tunnel...

Frank Sumrall

SR 99 tunnel tolls increasing July 1: Here鈥檚 how much more you鈥檒l pay

The Washington State Transportation Commission is increasing the toll rates on the State Route 99 tunnel in Seattle by 3%.

56 minutes ago

Daniel Craig’s final James Bond movie comes full-circle