Bond 25: No Time To Die (2021)

Elevator Pitch: Bond, now retired, is recruited by the CIA to track down what seems to be a lethal virus which has been stolen from a British secret laboratory, apparently by Spectre whose leader Blofeld is being held in a UK prison. It becomes apparent that it is Spectre which is being targeted by an unknown assailant. After Bond and Felix Leiter are also targeted in a fishing boat explosion, Bond is rescued and is reunited with the MI6 personnel in London. He is also reunited with Madeleine Swann and her daughter, who we know was Bond’s lover five years earlier. They, with the new 007, are drawn inevitably to a secret island where the ‘Virus” is being manufactured by a megalomaniac intent on destroying the world. Can they save the planet and is Madeleine’s daughter Bond’s offspring?

Content: No sex or nudity, but some drinking. An absolutely stunning opening sequence before the credits, involving a masked assassin and then Bond’s heavily armed DB5. Bond goes to Cuba where he fights villains with the help of Paloma, a newly appointed CIA agent. Moving on there are car chases the most elaborate involving multiple vehicles and motor cycles in the Norwegian forests. The villains now use Range Rover Evoques. Various face to face meetings between Bond and the villain Lyutsifer Safin. Once on the island a lot of creeping about in semi-darkness with everybody firing off silenced machine guns. 

A View: Most critics seem to have enjoyed the slightly retro feel of the film, which presents scenes from previous Bond outings, only slightly brushed off and updated, while it seems testing out some future stuff. I thought the opening scene was terrific, and then the five minutes with Paloma (Ana de Armas) the CIA agent entertaining, but thereafter it gradually got duller as the characters spouted cod philosophy, and finally – oh! I’m not supposed to say.

There have been 25 Bond films. Check out the one I was in as a Spectre gunman: From Russia with Love, the one with the best car chase, GoldenEye and my favourite: Live and Let Die.