Pretty Good....

Rating: 7/10 (24 November 2006)

First off let me just say that I wasn't one of the "haters" that questioned Daniel Craig's casting as James Bond. I actually like Daniel Craig and even though I would have to say that I still consider Connery and Brosnan the two best Bonds Craig and Timothy Dalton are probably the two best actors to play Bond. If anything I guess I was a little baffled as to why Brosnan was pushed out of this role when he probably had at least a couple films left in him and his last Bond film was extremely successful. With all the said I went into this film with a very open mind and high expectations which were mostly met.
This film definitely hits the mark on many levels. This is by far the darkest Bond to ever grace the screen and I guess in many ways it seems more appropriate at this time in our history. The violence is probably the most realistic of any Bond film and we finally see a human Bond that if anything is pretty morally ambiguous. As a matter of fact I wasn't really sure I liked this guy. The action is good,although, some of it is a little bit unrealistic and seems to take away from this more realistic portrayal of Bond. The film, however, does fall short on a few levels.
As I said I like Daniel Craig but there did seem to be something missing here. I didn't mind the fact that he played Bond more edgy and even made the character hard to like at some points but I do feel there needs to be more charisma given off in the next film. I am not saying I want to see another Brosnan or Moore light hearted Bond but I do want someone that I at least kind of like. I just felt that we weren't really given enough of Bond's personality until, what I felt, was a forced and completely unbelievable transition at the end.
My final issue was that the film didn't end when it needed to which creates the above problem. I wont give anything away here but had the movie ended probably about 25 minutes earlier I would have definitely given it a higher mark. The last half an hour or so seems to stretch credibility and expects us to buy a complete change in Bond for very little reason. I kept expecting Bond to kind of give us a wink that he knew something we didn't but that didn't happen. Most of the audience in the showing I went to just weren't buying this.
Anyway, like I said above, this is a pretty good movie and I would definitely recommend seeing it in the theater. I am fairly certain that any short comings in this film have less to do with Craig and more to do with the direction and the writing. If this is tweaked just a little bit in the next film Craig could be playing Bond for the next ten years if he wants to.