Film reasonable; Bond great

Rating: 6/10 (3 April 2007)

First and foremost, Daniel Craig is great in this film: not surprising for anyone who saw his performances in Our Friends In The North (on UK TV) or Elizabeth...He had more dramatic depth and emotional resonances than many a recent Bond. He's a real actor, with real presence and real ability and, hopefully, this will be the wider audience breakthrough that will allow us to see him in many different guises.
The film was fine - a typical Bond film: daft plot; fantastic action scenes...
It doesn't, however, live up to the classic Bond films (ie Connery era) in terms of villains or humour. Sean Connery is a good actor. I don't actually think he has the depth of Craig as a dramatic actor, but he caught the suave brutality of Bond perfectly - Bond as both brute and gentleman. Craig comes off as a brute pretending to be a gentleman: with Connery, he was both. Connery and the films of that period, also had the humour nailed to perfection - the modern Bond may carry more angst and conflict within himself, but the film lacks that lightness of touch to offset the violence, that classic Bond films have.
Which brings me to the iconic capture and torture scene. Every Bond film has one. In Connery's case, his most precious equipment might be threatened by a laser, but we know he'll be saved before any potential damage might occur. The modern Bond has to be submitted to a far more tangible S&M experience - such that one seriously wonders how he manages to walk straight in the final reels of the film, let alone jump on his now girlfriend with such abandon. And yet, and yet, the former Connery scene, in all its obvious teasing of the audience, is so much more effective than the knotted rope scene, which just becomes painful to watch. (Edit: from reading around, the scene is pretty much as is portrayed in Fleming's book, so I guess the film makers were just being true to the original Bond vision).
The difference between the two scenes, pretty much sums up the difference between the two Bonds. It is highly possible that the blunter, more inescapably violent, Bond is a better fit for our blunter, inescapably violent modern times - but there's just something about that cruel, brutal, yet playful and joyously inventive earlier film Bond, that entertains more...and that is all that Bond films aspire to do, amidst all of their action, villains, beautiful doomed ladies and gadgets.