Is this the beginning of the end for Bond?

Rating: 6/10 (17 November 2006)

Welcome to the new James Bond, who enters the franchise through the first book of the adventures of the British superspy by Ian Fleming. Sadly, that's about as exciting as it gets. The filmmakers seem to be trying to reinvent Bond according to the Jason Bourne mold, which is fine. Except they left out the fun aspect of the earlier Bonds, while the pace here is not as consistently thrilling as what you get in the Bourne series. I miss Goldfinger, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and The Spy Who Loved Me, and Die Another Day, and even The Living Daylights. I miss the Bond girls with charisma like Ursula and Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg and Jill St John and Jane Seymour and Barbara Bach, to name some. I miss the larger-than-life villains, and i even miss Q and Moneypenny. Thank goodness Dame Judi is still around to save the day as M. Daniel Craig is a potentially good Bond, but he needs better material to work with. The story here is lame, and it's not helped by the lack of more memorable characters to make up the fun factor at least. In the Jason Bourne series, the villains are low-key too, but at least the movies pulsate with gripping action. Here, the action sequences come in spurts, and there are more witty one-liners from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie than one would find here. Sorry for having to make comparisons like this, but i am just trying to comment within the context of the movie's genre. While one does not wish for more of the same done-to-death formula exhibited by some of the earlier Bonds, the next Bond movie with Daniel Craig again needs to have better plot and character development, with the former being more involving and the latter being more engaging. Otherwise, this new start may just spell the beginning of the end for this lucrative franchise.