Those who complain are missing the essence...

Rating: 9/10 (15 December 2006)

This movie was fantastic as a Bond film, but you have to absorb the whole thing to come to that conclusion. When I heard that they were making Bond "darker and edgier" I cringed, but those reviewers were wrong. This Bond was not darker or edgier than some other Bonds. The critics just think of the cutesy later Moore films and think all Bond's are smarmy and silly. But watch "Live and Let Die" and you'll see that even Moore, in his first turn, was dark and edgy and brutal. And in "The Man With the Golden Gun" he was the epitome of who Bond is.
While I would agree with some of the complaints had I left with 20 minutes remaining in the movie, I think those who are whining didn't get the point. There were parts in the movie where I was worried they had "ruined" the franchise, but that is because I was buying into the critics and my preconceived notions about what I was going to see, not knowing that it would be redeemed in the end.
This was an "origin film" which is the current trend in Hollywood today (due to, paradoxically, the total lack of original ideas). While I generally don't like them, this one was different. It wasn't all mired in flashbacks and brooding about the past. Instead, it shows the birth of a great character. This is what some people miss. They miss the psychological transformation Bond goes through. James Bond is not supposed to "change" as a hero when we look at other Bond films, but he had to get where he is somehow. This movie explains the how...
Bond is lacking the suaveness to start the film, but that's because he hasn't learned it yet. He's a blunt instrument. He's green. He needs to grow. This movie is his growth. This story, though based in the danger posed by money and not something more diabolical evil scheme, shows the newly promoted 007 that he can't just rely on brute force and the odds. He has to defy the odds. M tells him that the lesson he learned is not to trust anyone.
His weakness has always been women (sex), but in this film he allows love to enter the equation. He learns that love is not going to fit into his life, because he can't trust anyone, and to love someone means you must trust them. And they showed this without duplicating the "murder of Mrs. Bond" from the George Lazenby film.
For anyone who still doesn't get it, ask yourself this:
Why was there no Bond Theme at the beginning of the film?
Answer: Because at the beginning of the film, there was no Bond, James Bond, 007. There was just a man named James Bond.
But the music comes at the END. It's because not until the very, very end, has 007 been born. For the first time, he utters his name in the proper manner, with the proper smugness. It's then and only then that James Bond exists, and it's THEN that the Bond Theme finally explodes, and if you get it, you get shivers down your spine.
More than any other origin film I've seen in my life, this movie works on that deep level. I got goosebumps when I heard that theme 2:20 into the film because it was then I knew that James Bond was back from 25 years of exile. And it was all the more shocking when I saw the writer was the same one who delivered the weak films of the last 15 years!