Daniel Craig makes a good 007

Rating: Null/10 (27 November 2006)

Daniel Craig makes a good 007, not up to Sean Connery but better than Brosnan, Dalton and Moore. This Bond film returns to the grittiness of the first Connery Bond films and shuns the silly puns and over the top gimmicks that turned the series into a comic strip. The problem with this film is its structure. It starts with a bang then comes to a dead stop with an excruciatingly long card game. It never recovers its pace although it does end with a good closing sequence in Venice. The much touted Eva Green is okay but not the great Bond girl that she's been cracked up to be. At 2 hours and almost 30 minutes the film is too long and the slow middle sequence just kills it. Hopefully the next installment will keep all the good features of this film and add a better plot and better pacing. It's no wonder this book was not filmed originally because it's a very weak novel. In my opinion, the best two Bond films were From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, which is one of the great films in any genre. But even though no one could ever live up to the Connery films, this new approach with Craig holds great promise.