This article contains spoilers for No Time To Die.After nearly two years’ worth of delays, the latest and arguably greatest James Bond film, No Time To Die, has finally been released in theaters to massive acclaim from fans and critics alike. And while many aspects of the film have garnered positive attention — from the story to the acting to the portrayal of its female characters — but there’s one specific character who is of particular note.
Every great Bond movie needs a great villain, and some of the best entries in the decades-old film series have been defined by their antagonists. There’s Auric Goldfinger in the movie of the same name, Alec Trevelyan aka 006 in GoldenEye, Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, and Raoul Silva in Skyfall, just to name a few — not to mention Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the leader of SPECTRE and Bond’s most iconic arch-nemesis of all. And true to form, No Time To Die adds yet another evil mastermind to 007’s ever-expanding rogues’ gallery: the sinister Lyutsifer Safin, played by Rami Malek of Bohemian Rhapsody and Mr. Robot fame.
Safin is introduced in the first scene of the film — a flashback to the childhood of Bond’s love interest Madeleine Swann. Safin makes a strong first impression, due to a combination of his strikingly eerie kabuki mask and Malek’s soft-spoken yet menacing performance. While the young Madeleine hides in her bedroom, Safin confronts her mother, revealing that Madeleine’s father Mr. White (a villain who longtime fans will remember from Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) killed his family, and that he’s finally come for revenge. But since Mr. White isn’t home, Safin settles for killing his wife instead. And while Safin soon attempts to murder Madeleine as well, he ends up sparing her life for unknown reasons. All in all, it’s a perfect introductory scene for Safin — one that establishes him as a ruthless killer while also revealing that there’s more to him than meets the eye.
Indeed, Lyutsifer Safin is anything but a generic Bond villain. Despite having a name that’s only a few letters off from “Lucifer Satan”, he’s hardly a generic mustache-twirling evildoer, though he’s certainly a demonic presence in his own right. One of the most unique things about Safin is how much he eschews the typical cliches associated with the Bond villains of movies past. He isn’t hammy or over the top in his demeanor, instead possessing a subdued, almost introverted personality. But instead of making him less threatening, Malek’s creepily underplayed performance only serves to make Safin’s cruelty even more chilling.
Another way that Safin breaks the mold is his cold, ruthless pragmatism. The classic Bond villains of days past are infamous for their impractical death traps and info-dumping monologues in which they explain their evil plans in explicit, excruciating detail. But by contrast, Safin is strategic, manipulative, and utilitarian in his methods. He doesn’t waste time with overly elaborate stunts, he uses others as pawns to enact his brutally simple plan for revenge. And the results speak for themselves — by the film’s halfway point, Safin has eliminated the entirety of Spectre, including Blofeld himself, wiping out all those responsible for his family’s death without ever having to fire a single shot himself.
Although, some would argue that Safin’s plans after his revenge is complete would have benefited from a bit more exposition. Once Blofeld is dead and Safin’s quest for revenge is complete, the movie still continues, with Safin kidnapping Bond and Madeleine’s daughter as he prepares to spread the Heracles bioweapon across the entire globe. Safin never spells out his motives outright, with his final monologue instead providing vague statements about how he sees himself as an “invisible god” with the power to shape the world as he sees fit.
It’s a rather abrupt shift in his character from victimized vengeance-seeker to mass-murdering megalomaniac. But while the details of his endgame definitely could have used more clearing up, Safin was hardly a sympathetic figure beforehand, with his twisted sadism and controlling nature being well-established facets of his personality. It’s hardly a stretch to imagine that his decades-long obsession with revenge has corrupted Safin into a misanthropic madman who takes joy in finally holding absolute power over life and death after living with the trauma of having his family taken from him. Of course, if that is indeed the case, it would have been nice to know it from more than just subtext.
But regardless of any flaws in his characterization, Safin does something very important that makes him unique among the Bond villains of the Daniel Craig era. Namely, his larger-than-life, melodramatic persona and the grand scope of his plans are a massive callback to the antagonists of the earlier Bond films. Yes, Safin’s personality and methods are a sharp contrast to those of the classic villains, but he still resembles them in other ways. His facial scars, signature kabuki mask, and purple robes grant him a much flashier aesthetic than more mundane villains like Le Chiffre and Silva, while his elaborate island base would feel right at home in the days of Sean Connery’s Bond. And of course, there’s his evil plan, which involves the use of a nanobot-based bioweapon — the exact kind of world-ending doomsday device that would feel more at home with one of the campier Bonds than Craig’s more grounded portrayal.
And yet, despite being the kind of antagonist that Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan would have gone up against, Safin doesn’t feel out of place. It’s a testament to Cary Joji Fukunaga’s talent as a director that he manages to blend the grittier feel of Craig’s earlier films with the over-the-top nature of the classic series. The end result is a perfect balance of traditional and modern, which pays homage to all that’s come before while still innovating on it. Safin’s role as a villain reflects this — he has all the trappings of a retro bad guy while still feeling like a distinctly 21st century antagonist. He has the eccentric costume and secret lair, but he also has the cunning needed to finally kill James Bond once and for all, granting him a posthumous victory over 007. And because of that, Safin will no doubt go down in history as one of the greatest Bond villains of all time.