inaction movie

Rating: 4/10 (22 January 2007)

The new Bond movie has so much PR to do to convince you Daniel Craig IS the new Bond that it neglects (as cooing critics have) other aspects of the story. Watching people sit around playing cards is less interesting than seeing a Bond, any Bond, in action. A villain who cries blood is not interesting. Craig is great in spite of only being required to sit around playing cards, or in the films ridiculous conclusion sitting around in a wheel chair. The credit sequence here is pretty silly; a literalization of the icons of a deck of cards that kill.
A scene involving a threat to the villains girlfriend seems to be lifted from Altman's The Long Gooodbye.
But really, if Bond is going to care about someone, write the character well, and cast someone who has a broader range that this self-impressed 2-dimensional British cream pie (played by a very baaaaaad actress). Vesper Lynd s*cks. She is profoundly non-compelling. She didn't register a positive twitch in my ganglia, but somehow Bond is ga-ga and moves into caring-protector mode. She's the worst part of the movie.
At least I could sit through this one; some thing I haven't been able to do for about 2 atrocious decades of Bond films. And super-pinhead Denise Richards is relievedly nowhere in sight. It's amazing that this entire phenom did not result in an ounce of exposure for the previous satire version of C.R..