Simply The Best Bond In A Generation

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2007)

Daniel Craig has restored what had become a tiresome and bloated series. I, for one, am THRILLED to see that overly-smug pretty boy Brosnan replaced with the first actor to capture the icy anger of Fleming's Bond since the early Connery films. I had truly begun to wonder if the Bond franchise had run its course as the Brosnan films became more outlandish than the worst of the Moore Bonds, but this "rebooting" of Bond is long overdue and well worth the wait. The stunts are finally more realistic (no more snowboarding in front of giant solar lasers, thank goodness!), and the gadgets are limited.While other posters have bemoaned the lack of gadgets, a quick comparison to the "classic" Connery Bonds clearly shows that the gadgets were originally intended to be small, nearly invisible parts of the story rather than the centerpieces of the action. By the end of the Brosnan era, the gadgets became such common deus ex machina that logical story-writing was simply replaced with, "what gadget can we invent that will save Bond from this NEW absurd scenario? I know--an invisible car!" Thankfully, it appears those days are now behind us!
Finally, the idea of Brosnan as a stone-cold killer was laughable, but Craig infuses his Bond with the sense that he was just as willing to kill you as look at you. This is the Bond that Fleming described, and it is truly a pleasure to see the franchise moving in the right direction again.