Despite a few dissenting voices bemoaning a bloated plot, film reviewers largely agree that this is the 007 blockbuster to tempt audiences back into cinemas
No Time to Die, the James Bond film on which so much has been pinned, received its world premiere in London on Tuesday night, heralding what arguably the entire film industry hopes will be a return to mass moviegoing after months of pandemic shutdown. And the first wave of reviews – embargoed until one minute past midnight on Wednesday morning – should set their minds at rest.
UK broadsheet critics largely agreed that the film – supposedly Daniel Craig’s final outing as Bond – had delivered in spades, with the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Times all giving the film five-star raves. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it an “epic barnstormer … delivering pathos, action, drama, camp comedy (Bond will call M ‘darling’ in moments of tetchiness), heartbreak, macabre horror, and outrageously silly old-fashioned action”. The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin said the film was an “extravagantly satisfying, bulgingly proportioned last chapter to the Craig era, which throws almost everything there is left to throw at 007 the series can come up with”, while in the Times, Kevin Maher proclaimed: “It’s better than good. It’s magnificent.” In contrast, however, the Independent’s Chrissie Loughrey offered a dissenting view, suggesting the film was “strangely anti-climatic … a rotating sideshow of old characters and plot points”.
