The magnitudes of the successes and failures weren't very great

Rating: 6/10 (16 November 2006)

The basic problem would seem to be a poor script, and without a very good script detailing a clever story a film will never do very well. The opening credits were probably the worst part of the film. They appeared to deploy all the technical brilliance of the 1950s, and the backing song was dire enough that its clear why this was the first time I heard it, and it'll also be the last. If Daniel Craig intended to portray a charmless, rough and uncouth proto-Bond who picks up married women and kills people in lavatories in between making beginner's mistakes then he did very well indeed. Mads Mikkleson was better than most and could have swopped his character's unexplained name with his own, profitably, and the fact Eva Green was there at all proves she can beat out the rest before she puts in a good acting performance. Judi Dench got it right this time for the first time, thank you script, so the sexist turd of the previous films turns into a spymaster with a brain who'll hopefully stick around for a while longer. Best of all the fantasy/comedy element of post-Connery Bond has gone, thank God. It just shows that some of the worst problems in life will disappear if you wait 35 years. There were, however, some basic failures: the story didn't enrapture me even if you try to pretend it hung together. Like the opening animations, it was all rather low-octane, and like a two-stroke Trabant engine it occasionally stuttered in manner that couldn't be overlooked. Perhaps worst of all I started feeling sorry for M. Le Chiffre, on several occasions. It was refreshing for Vesper to join in a punch-up, but somehow I got the impression her eagerness for the fray, and her subsequent willingness to bang a bad guy's gun hand against the floor, could only be based on a desire to protect British taxpayer's money! and so I smiled :(
It could be said the film is a series of scenes without much continuity. There are a lot of Jaguars, made to look ever cheaper by the more elusive Astons and Bentleys, so a product placement too far there. The portable DC defibrillator in the dashboard was merely silly, and this can't count as a spoiler since no one would believe it till they see it. Bond says "please" and "thank you" a lot, as if he's just completed the MI6 gentleperson's "nice" course. The film appeared to have no soul of tempo, or overall cohesion, as different periods of it were quite different to others. This, in film-making, is no good.