Is Craig's Bond as good as Connery? I say he's actually better.

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2006)

Bartender: Shaken or stirred? James Bond: Does it look like I give a damn? Few movie quotes so totally capture the mindset behind a film as this quip from Daniel Craig's 007 in Casino Royale.
Like Batman Begins, Casino Royale represents a complete re-boot of the Bond mythos, bringing us back the origin and re-laying the foundation for cinema's longest running franchise.
The last time I saw a Bond movie in the theatre was back in the Roger Moore days. In the interim since they've become video fodder, mostly because they'd become larger than life in all the wrong ways. The stories, or what little of them there were, had long ago become nothing more than mere vehicles for techno-wizardry, and the Bond universe had become a perverse cliché built around the latest toys and seemingly impervious villains.
What's refreshing about Casino Royale is that everything that had grown stale has been jettisoned in favor of a stripped down version of the super sleuth. Well, almost.
Gone are the gadgets, villains with metal teeth or razor-rimmed bowler hats. Still present are the sleek cars (albeit of the real-world variety), beautiful women, and white knuckle action scenes.
Much was written about the choice of Daniel Craig for the role of Bond. Complaints abounded that he wasn't "refined" enough, his eyes were too blue, Bond could never be blond, or just simply that he didn't have "the look".
To all that I say hogwash.
Craig plays bond as a brute force killing machine who also possesses a keen level of intelligence, but must constantly check himself to use his intellectual wiles when he would more readily prefer to savagely beat a foe to a pulp, or slit his throat.
Craig's Bond both gives and gets in equal measure. As much as he bloodies and bludgeons his opponents, he equally finds himself slashed, beaten, bleeding and poisoned.
As if a nod to the more intimate side of Bond that was briefly and (some say) disastrously flirted with in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond is given a human side, opening himself up with precarious results to the stunning Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), with whom he chooses to give up the undercover ops and settle down to a normal life.
So, in a nutshell, how good is Craig's performance? In my opinion, he's the first since Connery to absolutely personify the role of Bond. And, while many won't agree, I reluctantly have to say that I think he's actually better than the venerable Scot.
Heresy? Perhaps. Good movie smarts? You bet.