James Bond has returned.....Utterly miscast in a disappointing film!

Rating: 5/10 (8 December 2006)

Casino Royale is a very good action spy thriller that anyone who is not a real James Bond Fan will enjoy immensely.
However i'm a James Bond Fan and i'm afraid that Casino Royale is a disappointment. It left me feeling the exact same way as i did when i saw On Her Majesty's Secret Service for the first time, and not just because its a miscast actor in the role.
I mean Daniel Craig is simply WRONG for the role of James Bond! There's a scene where he tries on the Tuxedo in a hotel room for the first time and poses in the bathroom mirror to let the audience speculate. Sorry, but he reminded me more of Robert Shaw's Red Grant in From Russia With Love rather than Sean Connery or Roger Moore...and i'm sick of hearing that most of Moore's Bond films were rubbish, they were brilliant flicks! Anyway, Daniel Craig seems to have been told by the director Martin Campbell to REALLY pout those lips at the camera and the Production lighting enhances those sea blue eyes of his as to make him as sub human as possible. All wrong i'm afraid. Daniel Craig is a superb character actor in films like Layer Cake and TV shows like Our Friends In The North, but as James Bond 007 he is severely miscast on looks alone. As I've said he would have made a great Bond villain or henchman but not as the suave and sophisticated great Spy himself.
Its not all Daniel Craig's fault of course. The music score is rubbish as is the title song 'You know my Name'. David Arnold is a lacklustre composer who recycles classic Bond themes and tracks through crappy computer and keyboard equipment, John Barry he is not! The way the Bond producers try to screw around with the 'tradition' of James Bond films defies belief. By tradition i mean the classic mini adventure has been tampered with to have James Bond's gun barrel sequence take place in.....a slum toilet. And Bond's second kill in this film is a tired retread of James Bond's assassination of Professor Dent in Dr. No. The storyline is asking us to forsake all that has gone before from Dr. No to Die Another Day and that Bond has just obtained his 'OO' license to kill and that the real Bond adventures start here.
If that is to be the case then what the hell is Judi Dench doing as M?! Her character has been badly rewritten, she does not really like this Bond but during the Brosnan days she secretly liked and yearned for Bond to come back safely. Its all really depressing that the producers and writers were anxious to change the formula again, and what if Daniel Craig quits after his second outing like Dalton did? Then they are in trouble , because if Bond ends up being portrayed by as many actors who played Tarzan then the character of Bond will become lost for good and no one will identify with who and what he was all about in the first place.
A bitterly disappointing Bond film.