A Bond Flick English Folks Can Be Proud Of?

Rating: 8/10 (15 November 2006)

Impressive Offering from an Over-hyped Franchise. I really like this Bond movie for a change. Even though I always succumb to the mega-millions in advertising and pay full admission price to nearly every Bond movie coming out, I've never been the biggest fan of the movie series, Moore, Brosnan, Dalton or Connery. Which made this movie all the more surprising and satisfying.
The plot was strong - even unpredictable (when's the last time you said that about a Bond flick?) and it felt like an original story was developed to be seen specifically in a wide-screen cinema.
This time the characters are far more realistic and believable than the past three Bond movies (better villains, fewer cheese-ball women and lack of standard stereotypes). A few times I looked around at folks and I didn't see very much of that grimacing you normally witness as mind-numbing clichés fly out of bad guys mouths. It seems screenwriters Purvis and Wade were (thankfully) careful to avoid these this time.
And Bond? I really liked Daniel Craig in Layer Cake (less so in Munich) but I truly think he's going to be around quite a while if he can continue his solid (and very unique) portrayal of 007.
8/10.