Bond goes classless

Rating: 7/10 (12 December 2006)

The critics will have you believe that this Bond is more like Ian Fleming's original character - the super-cool ruthless one-man assassination squad. As was said to the fictional press Baron by his (of necessity) sycophantic editor Salter, "this is true up to a point, Lord Copper". In other words, "not really". The original Bond was a projection of Fleming's own background (rich, upper-class, Eton, Sandhurst), snobbishness and tastes  fast cars, luxury goods, fine liquor, tobacco, disposable women and spying games - into a fantasy world in which he could be the ruthless man of action he never was in real life.
Here, Daniel Craig as Bond is anonymous, classless, a cog in the governmental machine (though not always obedient), a character from "Spooks" in fact who doesn't care whether his martini is stirred or shaken (the bar tender looks quite crestfallen when he say this). His hunky good looks don't look upper-class Brit and he looks like a gorilla in a dinner suit. He does convince in the action sequences.
Speaking of those, they were exciting to watch, particularly the chase across the construction site at a port in Madagascar, but the tensest moments, and the ones nearest to Fleming's book, were the gambling sequences, removed from a small casino in northern France to Montenegro. In the book the game was baccarat, here it's a variation of poker. No doubt it would help to know the rules, but if you don't you just watch who scoops up the chips. Bond's opponent, Le Chiffre, played by Mads Mikkelsen (very big on Danish TV) is quite good-looking and does come across as being only moderately evil; belting Bond's balls with a rope (Bond almost seems to enjoy it) isn't really on a par with Goldfinger's crutch aimed laser, and money laundering for African dictators isn't in the same class as blowing up the world a la Blofeld.
The Bond girl is something of a throwback. Vesper Lynn (Eva Green) is certainly very beautiful and starts off by not liking Bond much, but she crumbles fairly quickly to his charm and becomes the maiden in distress he has to rescue. Bond manages to bed only two women in the whole show, one in the line of duty  it ain't the sixties any more. There is a perfectly fine "M" from Judy Dench, but no Moneypenny or "Q". The great Giancarlo Gianni is tucked away in a minor role as MI6's man in Montenegro but the rest of the cast, who don't have a lot to do, are unremarkable and the cars have very minor roles  no Bentley and just a couple of Aston Martins. There are also some cameos of the "blink and you'll miss them" variety such as Richard Branson at an airport security checkpoint.
Despite the lengthy running time this was an easy movie to sit through. Having set-piece, seat-gripping action pieces intercut with quieter moments all in dazzling locations seems to have the peculiar property of making the viewer lose track of time, or at least lose track of how far into the story we are. The action peaks rather early, before the big poker game, and the Venice Palazzo bit at the end, ingenious though it is, comes almost too late. Still, most Bond films have been like that  a series of action sequences and an episodic plot (if any) and for that reasons not true to the books, which are about tastes and sensations and how it might feel to be a spy, at least if you are an upper class snob. Anyway, this Bond film is successful enough to ensure there will be another one. Look out Osama.