Action thriller

No Time To Die

Daniel Craig’s much delayed swan song as the world’s most famous spy concludes in spectacular style, proving once again that when it comes to being James Bond, nobody does it better.

Bond has always tailored himself in the cultural clothing of the time and now he’s refit for the #MeToo era, and his latest mission sees him not only saving the world but also being held to account for his litany of misogyny going back to the first Bond film, 1962’s Dr. No.

And the most powerful asset of this globetrotting action thriller is Craig’s willingness to the essay 007’s psychological pain, a bravura performance from a script which leans purposely on aspects of Greek tragedy.

Classical allusions include a scientific project called Herakles, a henchman nicknamed Cyclops, and Ralph Fiennes’ ‘M’ suffering an enormous bout of hubris. Meanwhile the traditional pre-title sequence plays as a prologue setting out the key characters as well as the more standard 007 action set-piece. And later we’re treated to a 21st century spin on a gouging of the eyes.

These elements are no cheap grab for cultural gravitas, but are embedded in the script’s DNA. Nor are allusions to myth and legend new to Bond, feel free to read about Skyfall placing Bond on a pedestal next to King Arthur, here.

Bond suffers emotional and physical punishment which leaves him bruised, bloodied and bereft. And the closer Bond gets to happiness the more his suffering and the dramatic stakes increase. It’s a dilemma which illuminates the dark heart of Bond.

Since Judi Dench’s ‘M’ called Pierce Brosnan’s Bond ‘a misogynist dinosaur’ in 1995’s Goldeneye, the franchise filmmakers have grappled with the sexism of Bond the man, and the franchise. However No Time To Die sees a reset of values, and Bond is made to suffer a series of humblings at the hands of a pair of high-achieving younger female agents.

British star Lashana Lynch and Cuban-Spanish actress Ana de Armas excel as play agents of MI6 and the CIA respectively, they’re equally as ruthless and skilled as Bond, and each essay a very different brand of humour. Plus the former answers the question, could we have a non-white and/or female 007, with a resounding yes.

This is all welcome but I wasn’t expecting for Bond to apologise and then attempt to atone for a lifetime of sexist behaviour. This would be a jaw-dropping move in any popcorn blockbuster, never mind the 007 franchise. Don’t assume this means Bond has gone ‘soft’. When the need arises he remains an absolute cold-blooded assassin.

With Rami Malek’s terrorist mastermind called Lyutsifer Safin plotting biological warfare, this leads to a not-so-subtle allusion to the dangers of Bond’s life of promiscuity. This is a long way from 1987’s The Living Daylights which arrived in during the AIDS epidemic, where the response of Timothy Dalton’s Bond was to keep the number of his sexual partners below three.

Having Bond confront the effect of his long-standing toxic relationship with women is presumably intended to wipe clean Bond’s ledger, a necessary step in the characters reinvention if he wants to successfully navigate the changing cultural landscape.

Billie Eilish’s haunting Grammy-winning title song sets the tone for this emotional smackdown, and the pre-title sequence offers a nod to Dr. No, before updating the long-since retired silhouettes of dancing naked women, with images of a fallen Britannia.

Craig carries us through this process with an extraordinary feat of acting, unlike anything we’ve seen in this franchise before. Having once rashly promised to ‘slash my wrists’ rather than play Bond again, the actor seems energised by the prospect of putting Bond to bed.

He strains every considerable muscle to deliver a performance which is not only hugely physically demanding for a man of our age, but dramatically impressive, wryly funny, and profoundly emotional. Craig gives it all he’s got left in the tank, and absolutely smashes it among the enormous explosions, high-speed chases and ferocious fights.

The car chases have a tremendous bone-shaking authenticity, and the four – spot them – different variations of Bond’s Aston Martin car, will have petrolheads purring with avaricious delight. Plus we have a return to the gadgets that Ben Whishaw’s ‘Q’ once dismissed.

Shot through with all the gun-toting glamour you’d expect, we see 007 gunning for Safin who operates from a secret lair worthy of the great Bond villains. Frankly we’ve been long overdue a proper Bond villain threatening death to millions of people, and the return to world-saving stakes are something of a relief.

Craig was cast as 007 in response to the Jason Bourne series. And having seen off that box office threat, the producers have turned their attention to Bond’s current box office adversaries, Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible movies.

Similar to Cruise’s agent Hunt, Bond is now the leader of a diverse if undeniably posh and British team, with Naomie Harris, Whishaw, and Fiennes reprising their roles as Moneypenny, ‘Q’ and ‘M’, and they provide plenty of humour as Bond’s surrogate family.

Legacy and family are the key themes of this mission, not least with the return of Christoph Waltz as 007’s foster brother and arch-enemy, Blofeld.

Boy, this film does not disappoint. At an extravagant 163 minutes it’s the longest Bond film yet, and uses it’s running time to bring Craig’s five film 007 tenure to a satisfying climax, and comes extremely close to allowing him to depart on an all time high.

The end credits conclude withe familiar promise James Bond will return, and with Craig leaving the series in the rudest of health I can’t wait to see the face of the future.

Nemo’s Fury

TENET

Cert 12A Stars 5

Delivering the blockbuster of the year, Brit director Christopher Nolan confirms his position as the foremost creator of high concept top quality popcorn entertainment with this bold, epic and ingenious mind-bending spy thriller.

As a CIA agent who’s prepared to die for his team and his cause, John David Washington commands our attention as the un-named protagonist who’s recruited by a shady agency to save the world from a Third World War, a fate claimed to be worse than armageddon.

He’s thrown into a complex time-twisting plot which circles around art forgery and arms dealers, but if you’ve seen Nolan’s 2010 smash Inception, then you’ll know to expect nothing is as straightforward as it seems.

The son of Oscar winning screen legend Denzel, Washington has inherited his father’s screen presence, charm and talent but is very much his own man, and seems utterly comfortable shouldering the responsibility for carrying a huge movie such as this.

It’s a privilege Nolan previously afforded established heavyweight stars Leo DiCaprio and Christian Bale – and Washington isn’t out of place in their company.

Washington is teamed up with former Twilight star Robert Pattinson who brings a wonderfully dry comic delivery to his lines, and his introduction is as a somewhat highly strung ex-pat gentleman thief, imagine Lawrence of Arabia being played by David Bowie.

They’re a great pairing and it’s easy to imagine either of them as the next James Bond, and Nolan’s well known love of 007 is apparent in every frame.

From the superb and thrilling stunt work which involves articulated lorries, catamarans and the crashing of a real life jumbo jet, and in the glossy location work which reaches from the US to India via Italy and Scandinavia, Bond’s influence shines through.

Among all the inventively-staged action it’s great to see former TV Eastender’s actor Himesh Patel getting a boost to the big league to complete a diverse trio of agents. And on that note it’s refreshing to see a film of this stature and sweep include important scenes between an African-American lead and an Asian woman of a certain age, the elegant Dimple Kapadia.

Recently announced as Princess Di in TV’s The Crown, Elizabeth Debicki is terrific despite being cast again as an abused trophy wife fighting for access to her young son.

There’s a welcome though brief appearance by Nolan stalwart, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh is cold heartedly monstrous as a Russian oligarch.

A dizzying and explosive adventure to rank alongside Nolan’s Inception for its ability to confound the audience, the writer and director even feels compelled to warn us early on not to try and figure out what’s happening – but just to lose ourselves in the thrill of the chase. As Clemence Poesy’s scientist says. ‘Don’t try to understand, feel it.’

Nolan’s ability to craft crowd-pleasing spectacle remains undimmed and is so brimming with confidence he dares to employ one of cinema’s oldest visual tricks and succeeds in making it seem remarkably fresh and almost groundbreaking.

Thanks in part due to Ludwig Goransson’s thunderously propulsive score Tenet sounds fantastic, and it looks incredible, especially on a giant IMAX screen. This is the biggest cinema event of the year and you don’t want to miss it.

THE OLD GUARD

Cert 15 Stars 2

Charlize Theron’s latest action thriller is a wannabe franchise starter but instead of being an extravagant exercise in gleeful mayhem promised by the outlandish concept, it delivers a curiously flat experience in a painfully pedestrian manner.

With centuries old immortal warriors battling their way across time, this could easily have been a storming feast of inventive comic book violence, like 1988’s Highlander updated for the 21st century.

Highlander is a big bag of swashbuckling nonsense and one of my favourite films, however where it featured a contest to the death for the ultimate prize, here they’re a sword-carrying band of do-gooding undercover mercenaries, a bit like TV’s the At-Team, but without the knowing sense of escapist fun.

Wanting to anchor the story firmly in the real world the script includes kidnapped African schoolgirls, Afghanistan action, and an exploitative pharmaceutical corporation.

But it takes itself far too seriously and is played with the earnest and weary tone of an existential drama as characters struggle to cope with the pain of never-ending life.

Worse the adequately-staged action is formulaic and nowhere near as thrilling as Theron’s blistering fights in 2017’s thriller Atomic Blonde. Here she’s the leader of the soldiers teaching the newly immortalised KiKi Layne how to survive as an outsider in a world which fears you.

As for Theron’s team, Matthias Schoenaerts is even more morose than usual, while Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli are sympathetic but forgettable, and collectively they’re far from a bundle of laughs. But as the villain is tragically underpowered, they’ve little reason to raise their game.

The most interesting character is Chiwetel Ejiofor’s former CIA agent who commissions Theron’s team to stage a daring rescue, and terrific as the British actor can be, even he struggles with the misjudged tone, which is a criminal waste of talent as he’s more than capable of delivering the outrageous performance necessary to carry the material.

PAYBACK

Cert 15 Stars 2

West Midlands-born kick boxing champ turned actor Scott Adkins brings a Jason Statham-esque swagger and action skills to this low rent sequel to 2018’s brash action crime thriller The Debt Collector.

He makes a bickering double act with Louis Mandylor as they go to Las Vegas to see a criminal casino owner who owes money to their boss. Meanwhile, a notorious drug kingpin is after them to avenge his brother’s death.

British writer and director Jesse V. Johnson keeps everything simple and direct with a blood, bullets and banter approach, and while nothing’s very original I was never bored.

7500

Cert 15 Stars 3

Tense, brisk effective and brisk, this airplane action thriller is grounded in the best sense by great central performance Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

He stars as Tobias, an American co-pilot on a Berlin-Paris flight who’s caught in a life and death struggle to save the lives of his passengers and crew after terrorists try to seize control of the plane.

Having found fame as a teen star of TV series 3rd Rock From The Sun, Gordon-Levitt graduated to blockbusters such as Looper, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises.

However this is far from an action man role but a portrait of an ordinary and mild-mannered man driven by extremes to desperate measures.

Tobias is confused and slow to respond to events and finds himself locked in the cockpit with an injured co-pilot and an unconscious terrorist, while his flight attendant girlfriend is at the mercy of the hijackers who threaten to murder their captives if Tobias doesn’t open the cockpit door.

Being a non-German speaker temporarily flummoxes the aggressors, and Tobias’s behaviour is desperate and painful as the balance of power switches back and forth.

Omid Memar is uncertain and scared as the youngest of the attackers, while Aylin Tezel is made to suffer as Tobias’s girlfriend.

It’s confidently directed by Patrick Vollrath in his feature-length film debut, who squeezes us into the claustrophobic cockpit and makes us question how would we act as Tobias does in the same circumstances.

He doesn’t keep us waiting for the drama to begin, maintains a strong tone and makes the close quarter violence shocking and realistically brief and nasty.

The sound design adds hugely to the fraught atmosphere, combining the warm hum of the instruments, heavy breathing of the injured co-pilot and the hammering of the terrorists on the cockpit door, while the calm voice of air traffic control contrasts with the onboard screams of panic and fraught shouted conversations. Book your seat now.

EXTRACTION

Cert 18 Stars 3

Thor star Chris Hemsworth uses his considerable bulk to batter his way through this blood-soaked and bullet-riddled action thriller which is terrific when it barrels along all guns blazing, but a little unsteady on its feet when it stops to pause for breath.

Forgoing his over-abundant charm and gift for comedy in favour of a no-holds barred intensity, Hemsworth plays a world weary mercenary called Tyler whose latest mission is to extract the teenage son of an Indian drug lord from the clutches of a rival drug baron in Dhaka, the densely populated capital of Bangladesh.

Tyler is fast on his feet and with his fists for a big man, he always brings a gun and grenades to a knife fight and he’s also pretty handy with a blade.

But as Tyler’s mission begins to transform into a repentance for a lifetime of killing and his failings as a father.

Extraction is produced by Joe and Anthony Russo, who wrote and directed Marvel blockbuster Avengers: Endgame, and is directed by their stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave.

He brings inventive flair and highly polished technical skill to the exhaustingly brutal and extraordinarily well-executed scenes of multiple slaughter.

Immersive and fluent camera work puts you in the heat of the brutal action, and there’s room for the script to reflect on cyclical nature of violence and how the sins of the fathers are visited upon their sons.

At its best it rivals Keanu Reeves’ John Wick films for relentless carnage, but lacks its unique otherworldly sense of time and place.

Plus the dialogue and plotting is functional at best, and I hope Hemsworth isn’t getting paid by the word.

Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani is underused as a rare female character but still manages to impose herself on proceedings, and if there’s a sequel then it would be great to see her take centre stage.

 

END OF WATCH

Stars 3

The writer of the Oscar winning smash hit Training Day, returns with another gritty police thriller set in South Central LA, but with a Denzel Washington-shaped hole where the charisma should be.

Writer and director David Ayer, shot entirely on location in fidgety, semi-documentary, police-cam video style, creating a loud and tense gun and drug movie where the highest ambition police officers have is to survive their shift and have their timesheet signed off, End Of Watch.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Mike Zavala Michael Pena are patrol car partners who come across a safe house belonging to a Mexican cartel who immediately put a price on their heads for disrupting their lucrative drugs trade.

The cops aren’t the brightest guns on the street but they are mostly honest and unquestioningly brave. Patrolling is a series of verbal abuse, brutal fist fights and vicious gun battles, and even the music is aggressive.

Off duty, Anna Kendrick and Natalie Martinez provide strong acting support as their wives, with America Ferrera and Frank Grillo as their fellow officers.

Watching this film is like being trapped for two hours in a small steel cage with a pair of uniformed, squabbling, slurping, chattering caffeinated kids, before being released on a regular basis to be shot at by angry Uzi abusing gangsters.

Ayer doesn’t wholly commit to his handheld format which reduces its authenticity, and the last two scenes are unnecessary and lessen the films impact.

Despite this the two officers hold your sympathy and attention because although they’re not as interesting or entertaining as the film believes they are, even the most basic police work involves being screamed and shot at.

Their wives are the only lightness in their lives and in the movie and are a sweet and sassy counterpoint to the constant aggravation the men experience on duty.

This is a portrait of a city in a state of siege, and the only advice the script can offer is to wear comfortable shoes and a bulletproof vest.

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME

Cert 12A 129mins Stars 4

You won’t believe what you’re seeing in this comic book action adventure as Spider-man hits the high spots in a deliciously deceptive head-spinning romp.

A direct sequel to blockbuster smash, Avengers: Endgame, this is a mischievous mix of sweet high school romcom, fun teenage spy caper and exciting superhero CGI spectacular.

Peter Parker is in romantic pursuit of classmate MJ, on their school’s European vacation, when his costumed alter-ego Spider-man learns heroes don’t get holidays. 

Grumpy secret agent Nick Fury teams Spider-man with superhero Mysterio, which will be a surprise to long-time Spidey fans as Mysterio is one of the web-swinger’s best known arch-villains.

But re-inventing Mysterio as a dimension-hopping hero with a tragic past makes him a more interesting character while also tying this version of Spider-man into last year’s animated Multi-verse adventure.

Parker identifies Mysterio as the man to replace Iron Man as his mentor, and they set about battling the Elementals, extra-dimensional giants with power over air, earth, wind and fire.

Returning with a winning chemistry as Peter Parker and MJ, Brit actor Tom Holland and pop star Zendaya are the beating heart of the film, with her self-contained charisma making MJ the best superhero squeeze since Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane, in 1978’s Superman.

And they’re reunited with the key young cast members of Spider-man: Homecoming, and Marvel fan favourites such as Samuel L. Jackson, Jon Favreau and Marisa Tomei reprise their roles as the adult guardians.

Indie movie star Jake Gyllenhaal brings his unique brand of loopy intensity to Mysterio, and while he often gives the impression of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, it’s a useful quality to have when playing a guy trying to save the planet.

Having Parker unveil various old and new Spider-suits is part of a stream of call-backs to previous films, which will have fans cooing in delight.

Plus a pair of fat-rimmed hi-tech spectacles are a knowing wink to Michael Caine’s 1960’s spy, Harry Palmer, and neatly magnify the script’s central concerns.

While the film wears the frothy air of an espionage caper, the tone disguises some very serious thoughts about fake news and multi-media manipulation, while reminding us Parker was employed in other incarnations as a photojournalist.

From dealing with the fallout of Endgame to deciphering what Marvel has in store for Spider-man, there’s a lot to uncover in this, and one of the best secrets is kept until after the credits, so make sure you stay until the absolute end.

15 MINUTES OF WAR

Cert 15 Stars 3

Olga Kurylenko grabs the opportunity to stretch her talents, as a US teacher in this agreeably tense hostage drama inspired by true events of 1976 in East Africa.

And the former Bond girl delivers a more compelling performance than Brit actress Rosamund Pike did in last year’s similarly themed Ugandan kidnap thriller, Entebbe.

Gun wielding terrorists kidnap her young class but their school bus crashes within sight of the Somali and Djibouti border, leading to an armed stand-off.

Strong location work provides a dusty authenticity, and the script is unafraid to draw parallels to contemporary events.

A QUIET PLACE

Cert 15 Stars 5

Writer and director John Krasinski co-stars alongside real-life wife, Emily Blunt, in this magnificently terrifying apocalyptic horror.

They play a married couple whose family are struggling to survive in a near future world where civilisation has been destroyed and humans are preyed on by creatures who hunt by sound.

Produced by Transformers supremo, Michael Bay, it scared up a thunderous £250m at the global box office on a tiny £13m budget. Smart, sharp and shocking, it’s a stunning example of how to use the simplest techniques to create nerve-snapping tension and will leave you silent with fear.