The Old Bond is Dead.....

Rating: 6/10 (1 February 2007)

Im a huge fan and despite the delayed review I did see it in the first weekend of it's release. The critics loved this bond, and that scared me the most, bond was never about the critics, in a politically correct world he was a dash of imperialism, watching a bond movie was like eating a double-decker sandwich with everything in a gourmet restaurant the ingredients were the same but the expensive surrounding made the taste so much better.
Im pro-change, everything changes and with the changing times everything needs to change, the old bond was from the royal family and was cold-war era relic, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the movies were at loss for new villains and frankly none of the modern villains or their motives (save for golden-eye with the defected 00) had the flavour that SPECTRE and its associates brought to the movies, now we have a villain albeit a faceless, stateless one TERRORISTS AND TERRORISM, Osama is not marketable enough so the bond makers have done the next smartest thing and MADE PASSING References TO THE ORGANISATION (SPECTRE REINVENTED AND IM WILLING TO BET MY LIFE ON IT), thus bringing us back to the faceless all powerful organisation that shone in bond movies till the 70's, the world was a bigger place back then,the new spectre with its terrorist links (whats the bet, they will take the chicken route and not discuss their religion) will have global universal HATE APPEAL not enjoyed by Spectre (I'm from India we liked the soviets).
But this movie has gone and removed almost everything that was good about bond, he was royal blood, charming, confident, racist, chauvinist while this one is everything but the above he hardly even feels British.
The lingering feeling is that this movie IS In fact PREQUEL FOR THE FORTHCOMING MOVIES where bond will find his groove and settle in it, the closing lines, the references to "the organisation" give us hints that the old bond will be back in a new avatar and this movie wants to give a Freudian analysis on why he becomes the way he his, I'm not a big fa of this move.
This is however closer to IAN FLEMINGS EARLIER NOVELS THEN ANY OTHER BOND MOVIE, I've read some novels and the earlier one did in fact have the dry, cold humour and brutal action scenes like this one.
The movie is entertaining though we have loads of superb one-liners but they get overbearing after sometime, i don't see many of them becoming bond movie legends the way even Pierce Brosnans one-liners have become.
The production values are absolutely superb with excellent use of black and white in the opening scenes, the soundtrack is OK though and the old formula of the big bond song also dies with this movie.
The acting is superb all around, too much has been said about Craig I for one would not rate him as highly as the others, his acting great though.
There are a couple of memorable scenes such as the opening scene and the chase scene.
The movie is also quite long and get boring sometimes, those who don't enjoy poker will not enjoy this movie as much, the emotions one experiences while playing hold-em have to played to be understood.
The filmmakers almost purposefully try and be different, the fabulous Aston Martin is wasted, they almost purposefully have no explosions in this movie at the end which actually makes the climax quite OK.
This movie has been made with the women and the critics in mind, no guys (the traditional audience) likes to see nude men, and so much emotion and drama in this bond film.
The twists are predictable and expected and add little to the movie.
When I went to a bond movie i didn't want a character rooted in reality, i wanted a super-spy, hot chicks, great care chases, guns, explosions, supervillians, Q, chauvinism and still be called cool, like I said it was like double-decker sandwich with everything (especially extra cheese), seeing all this in a big budget (expensive) setting made it so much cooler, removing most of the ingredients and substituting others with low fat variety, will always make it less tasty.
In all we have bond movie thats more of a prequel and which has deviated from almost every bond characteristic to date, participation of critics and newer audience will ensure higher ratings but people with more simple tastes like me (i enjoyed American pie) prefer the old bond any day.
Watch the movie after due consideration.
-s changed almost all bond characteristics, long and boring in parts, the effort to be different show, so-so background score.
+/-s Daniel Craig, maybe a prequel, the movie pimps everything bond drives a ford for gods sake.
+s superb acting and production, a couple of memorable scenes, SHOWS SOME GREAT PROMISE FOR THE FUTURE.
total 6/10 (fell below expectation but the ratings are higher because i see this as a prequel for greater things to come,AND THAT AS ANY OTHER MOVIE EVEN AS AN ALTERNATIVE OPTION TO BOND THIS MOVIE WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY GOOD, BUT AS A BOND FILM THIS MOVIE IS BELOW PAR )