Will Craig grow into role?

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2006)

Casino Royale is the movie the Bond franchise has been needing since an over-matched George Lazenby and a slightly off-kilter script ruined the promising On Her Majesty's Secret Service. However, I have to wonder: is Daniel Craig the Bond this movie needed? After seeing the film just once, I would have to regretfully say, "not quite." It's not that Craig is a terrible Bond - indeed, I found myself comparing him throughout the film to Connery and Dalton - but I'm just not sold on the way he delivers his lines; he seemed flat and not quite able to handle the one-liners (a notable exception being the torture scene, where a bound and bloodied Craig still manages to get the best of his captor with a quick wit). Craig looks thuggish and his icy blue eyes are the most menacing pair ever owned by a 007; he moves beautifully and his fight scenes are violent beyond anything a previous Bond could have pulled off, including Connery and even the physically imposing Lazenby. All well and good, but he hardly exudes the sense of dangerous magnetism radiated by Connery, Dalton or, to a lesser extent, Pierce Brosnan. He does, however, make Roger Moore look like a lecherous stiff (or rather, Roger Moore makes Roger Moore look like a lecherous stiff).
Craig aside, this is the best Bond movie since Goldfinger set the high water mark 22 years ago. The plot works magnificently well - taking 007 and pushing the reset button was a bloody brilliant move by the producers. The action is superb, but complements the plot, rather than distracting from it, as in the disastrous Die Another Day. The tension is quite real in everything from a scene where a terrorist tries to blow up an airplane (sure to evoke a sense of 9/11 angst; M even references 9/11 later in the film) to the life-and-death stakes poker game at Casino Royale.
Judi Dench is back as M, and thank God. Her scenes with Bond, particularly when he breaks into her apartment, absolutely bristle with a crackling chemistry between her and Craig. Eva Green is positively delightful as the complex Vesper Lynde - it's no wonder Bond is ready to hang up his double-O status for this woman, she's that intoxicatingly lovable, not to mention also superbly respectable, a trait often lacking in past Bond girls. Green is more than Craig's match in this film, and it is she who provides an emotional core that draws the film into a coherent, dramatic whole. Mads Mikkelsen is coldly menacing as the main villain, terrorist financier Le Chiffre, though a bit underutilized in this film, as is the solid but subdued Jeffrey Wright, Bond's CIA ally, Felix Leiter (who inexplicably disappears from the film around the time of Bond's abduction). Giancarlo Giannini is satisfyingly slimy as a questionable Bond ally.
The film left me wanting more. When Craig ends the film with the signature "Bond, James Bond," I wanted very badly to believe him; with practice, perhaps he'll improve his screen presence and diction to Dalton-like levels, even if he can't quite reach Connery (who can?). And though it's irrelevant at this point, I can't help wondering what this film would have been like had it starred Cliven Owen (there, I said it!) an actor who exudes the same cornered-animal sense of danger as Craig, but does so in a more imposing wrapper. Owen would have owned this film; Craig merely inhabits it. When Craig and Green entered a room together, all eyes were on her; since when does James Bond get shown up by his leading lady? I have to wonder if there's a reason Craig has mostly been cast in supporting roles prior to this film. Can he handle being a leading man among leading men, as I think Owen could? If Craig is serious about growing into this role, and I have high hopes that he will, he'll do some serious thinking about Jack Nicholson's character's creed in The Departed: "I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me."
To sum up, Craig leaves a little something to be desired, but this is still the best Bond outing in years, and probably rates second only to Goldfinger and From Russia With Love. Look for Bond 22 to be even better, provided Craig matures (a solid bet) and if the producers have the good sense to maintain the direction of this film (and that's a big if; after all, they did follow up the very solid The Spy Who Loved Me with the wince-inducing Moonraker). 8/10 stars.