Admirable but not much FUN

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2006)

Yes, Craig is a hard, lean and mean Bond and had me convinced of his Bondness after a few minutes.
Yes, some of the action scenes are intense.
Yes, the story is closer to Ian Fleming's books and basic concepts.
But ... the labyrinthine plot and occasional brutality was often just not much FUN. Of course, the "traditional" Bond movies are not so much Fleming's stories as spoofs of them -- and their plots were dumbed down to "Bond blows up the Big Bad Guy's Evil World-Threatening Installation with a BIG BOOM and then drills chicks on the beach." Casino Royale is more of a spy movie than a Bond movie -- it's about betrayal, black-white-gray ambiguity, mirrors reflecting mirrors, etc. etc. All that cloak-and-dagger stuff. In other words, it's Fleming's Bond, which isn't what people have been led to expect in the past 40 years of Bond movies.
So I admire the return to the source of the Bond mythos -- but I can't say I really ENJOYED the return. All the earlier Bond movies were essentially soda pop. This one is a very dry martini. Shaken or stirred? At least the Bond in this film gives the best answer yet....
TJW