Craig, Daniel Craig is excellent as James Bond

Rating: 10/10 (27 December 2006)

All in all, it was a very good film. Daniel Craig was excellent as Bond, although I do miss Pierce Brosnan a bit (he did a great job of making Bond a serious character, even if the scripting didn't always back him up).
After the perceived excesses of the more recent Brosnan films (fans keep coming back to the invisible car), things are heavily scaled back here, with no Q, and almost no cool gadgets. The fights are, to quote Thomas Hobbes, "nasty, brutish, and (not really) short." The highlight is a stairwell showdown where Bond struggles to fend off some machete-wielding villains and keep Vesper (Eva Green) out of harm's way. Green, who, as anyone who has seen "The Dreamers" can attest, is stunningly beautiful, and probably my second-favourite Bond girl (after Michelle Yeoh in "Tomorrow Never Dies").
Since they've got the origin story down, I hope they don't keep people like Q and Monneypenny out of future installments just to "be different." There were practical reasons in this one, since neither has much to do in the novel, but they're important parts of the films. This whole film was sort of a lead-up to the unveiling of Craig as the "Bond as we know him," complete with theme song, so I'm not concerned.
I know nothing about poker beyond some of the terminology (straight flush, full house, etc.), but the exposition from Mathis was a bit of an embarrassment in an otherwise low-key film. I don't think the filmmakers needed to explain what "all in" means to the audience.