Reinventing Bond beyond Bond! 007 is no longer a laughable figure...

Rating: 7/10 (31 December 2006)

A huge sigh of relief and a satisfied smile on my face... This was probably the only way to re-invent the Bond franchise, which I have followed the past 30 years: Tight, fresh and modern-day-explosive & technical in as realistic a manner as the series can handle. And with a surprisingly vulnerable villain and a close, credible bond (haha) to the heroine. It's Bond beyond Bond, so to speak. And Craig himself? Hard and cool as a rock, although equally hard to get personal with... But that's a needful purpose in order to lay the pathway for another string of films to work, I guess.
Dalton touched it a bit in "License to kill", and to some extent, Brosnan in "Die another day". But to me, Bond has never been so personally dramatic and involving as here, as the haunting end scenes truly underline: 007 is no longer a laughable, ridiculed figure! It's just slightly overlong and overplodding, but contains opening and closing action pieces of unreal proportions! And the casino theme and its poker game itself doesn't dominate- it blends in nicely.
As with the transformation of "Batman begins", I can with pleasure really look forward to a new and reborn series with hopefully unique qualities.
7 out of 10 from Ozjeppe.