No Time To Die (2021)

An absurd and yet striking image appears in the opening credits of the latest (last?) Bond film: a DNA double helix made entirely of handguns. What are we to make of this? One implication that the movie supports is that James Bond is some kind of genetic contagion. One might be forgiven then for watching all these years in rapt fascination the disarmament of every kooky super-weapon, the suits, the cars, the “insane” villains, the mega-babes, the global reach of British “intelligence,” not to mention all the booze: we were just totally stupefied by the sheer cinematic excess; we were all under a viral spell. The pathogenic idea here is that violence resides at the heart of being itself; the old dumb neoliberal axiom that you can’t make omelets without breaking some heads. Nor of course without exuding the extremes of heteronormative male seduction; one can almost smell the eau de toilette before ever entering the cineplex. Still, the killer Oxbridge slab of man known as Daniel Craig summons all of the pathos of a dying bull; he just can’t keep pace with our accelerating world. And yet it is one of the verities of Cinema that James Bond, like a virus, cannot die.