Loose Canon Under Watch

Rating: 8/10 (14 December 2006)

From KINOWORDSA solid engaging performance by all concerned. And all pulled together within nine months. The Brocolli Family can pierce through today's production complications: hire unknowns, fit them into set roles, and continue, extend, deconstruct then refashion their own niche genre to critical and audience acclaim. On the way, they can plunder iconic events of the day, celebrate then decimate exotic locations, and integrate/platform the latest media surveillance technologies as acceptable (product-placed) special effects. In fact, the kind of thing old Hollywood used to do, but packed layers of risk factoring 'production executives' could never make it happen anymore. And not with this brash visceral confidence. Not that Hollywood is left entirely behind, as the adventure is shadowed by a running Terminator determination in the central character and bravura Indiana Jones film-making dizziness. Not to mention Star Wars. Bond is, after all, another orphan, a loose canon that relishes, almost invites, the manic destruction that he causes, a failure in his job - losing card games, destroying embassies, useless, even, in the simple art of shadowing suspects. But like most orphans our eager blinded seeker for the truth is overseen by controlling adult figures, and whose suggestive parental significance, wary of his adolescent insistent ego, is likely to emerge more fully in 2007/8. One way or another, it's surely 'A' for the film, 'B+' for Craig, and, as he himself nearly said, 'M' for MotherKINOWORDS