Top class Bondery

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2006)

I saw Dr No at the cinema when it first appeared and have been watching Bond films ever since. For me the best ones are those which take the 007 character and therefore the viewer seriously, and for that reason I've found the Roger Moore films and even some of the Brosnan ones unwatchable.
This film is a real return to the basics of Bond. The producers have tried to get to grips with the character as though they were making a real movie, not another lucrative addition to a fantasy franchise. Look, James Bond is a cold killer who knows he himself could well die at any minute, and he wants the best of everything and won't take second best - food, cars, clothes, hotels, girls. Sean Connery, Timothy Dalton, even George Lazenby nailed this - and now Daniel Craig shows us how a man such as that is created.
I think many of the film's detractors are expecting the elements that the rest of us have seen so often they've become clichÃ©s - the villain's lair (always totally destroyed), the Bond girls, the expensive clothes, the improbable gadgets - and have not appreciated this laudable attempt to put new twists on old, tired material. Principally what these people are missing is the best Bond since Connery (in an extraordinary, human performance from Daniel Craig) and the best Bond film since the days of Connery. I thought such elements as the opening sequence, title sequence, use of the theme tune etc were intelligent and well judged. I particularly liked how Bond's relationship with Vesper Lynd was allowed to carry on after the principal bad guy was vanquished. (I've often wondered whatever happens to the Bond women after the end credits roll...)
My only criticisms are minor ones, including -
* a long, daft chase sequence involving freerunning (why didn't Bond just wait for the guy to come down off the crane?)
* some improbable situations (what's 007 doing with a defibrillator? - though they could have got round that if Le Chiffre's heart was bad and M didn't want him to die at the tables)
* and some missed opportunities (Felix Leiter gives the impression the US has money to burn - no, he'd have asked for interest on the loan or a cut of the take, and that would have placed more pressure on Bond to deliver)
* I couldn't really believe that Bond would have put in his resignation. More likely, he'd have kept it in draft form, never quite getting round to sending it. (Vesper: "Have you told M yet?" Bond: "I'm still working on the email. I want it to be just right.")
But, forgetting it's Bond, it's a very good film. This I suppose is the mistake the producers have made in the past - how many of the Bond films stand on their own as good movies?