Why this is an awful Bond

Rating: 1/10 (26 November 2006)

Is this where we are at? Is this the state of the nation? Bring back the cold war and let's dump this Bond into the rubbish bin of America's world paranoia. Because that's whets happened, Bond has been hijacked by the Yankee Doodle dandy with a cob on! In every Bond from on her Majesty's secret service to Golden Eye there has been more than a passing nod in the direction of the Fleming novels, and although the plot of the film sticks tersely to the novels outline, its modern interpretation is like fitting a square peg into a round hole. Craig's bond is the proverbial hammer, for whom every problem seems to be a nail, this was a real chance to expose an audience to Flemings insight into the Bond character, his reasons for returning to the service are complicated and full of pathos, made all the more acute by Vespers suicide. Now i'm not one of those nuts that says a film should be like the book, not in the least, they are two distinct and separate forms and should do what they do best. My complaint here is that this is Bond on the tin and some silly Mission Impossible, Ethan Hunt caricature of an English Spy inside. Campbell directs Craig like he directs Stallone in Vertical limits, wooden, without skill and not an ounce of sympathy. The Fleming bond even at this early stage was not the two dimensional blunt instrument that is cast here, his emasculation at the hands of Le Chiffre was a moment of brief respite for me. I had thought of doing that to myself in the second half of the film using my bare hands and a bag of Minstrels! But the agony continued! In fact had Campbell bothered to gain an insight from the novel, from which he stole the best line "The bitch is dead now." (of course he interpreted it "The bitch is dead!" which makes it sound very different to the British core of this character, much more like a moment from a Tarrantino script) the Yankeefication of Bond is an issue that really should be dealt with, its not that I don't like these bludgeoning action heroes from across the pond, I love them, grew up on them, but why oh why does it have to pervade every nuance of what is, essentially, a very English hero? And indeed a very English idea of heroism. This unique texture has been lost in this Bond, replaced by action sequences (That of course you expect to be very good) and the worse game of cards ever filmed!! No panache, no style, not an ounce of performance. One of the core themes removed from Bond is his loss of innocence, Fleming's novel saw a dedicated young man struggle for what is right in the world, win, then ultimately lose through a process of torture and suicide. The key is that he rejoins MI6 not because he is embittered or broken but because the world appears as it really is; dangerous, full of hopes and disappointment. The film has Bonds character start at thick and end at thicker. What ever revelation that Vesper might have brought is lost because of where this Bond started the film. I mean Campbell's idea of culture is to drop a Venetian building into the sea? Where is the finesse? It seems as though along with his Bond, even Campbell gave up hope at the end and started to pull the plug, flushing the whole sorry affair into a very deep murky water. Lets get back to the core of Bond, which is unquestionably The Best Of British, its Roger Moore leaping off a mountain with a union jack parachute, its Sean Connery sitting at the card table in Thunderball, and of course that very 'cunninlinguist' Brosnan allowing his masculinity to be 'PC'-fied. It is not a flickering 'Last Action Hero' muscle- bound- robot with the acting ability of a spade blowing up everything that moves (and a few that don't) Let the Americans do that with their hero's, they're better at it, and it makes more sense.