Craig was impressive. Movie was not.

Rating: 3/10 (19 November 2006)

**SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!**
Well, I saw Bond Begins, I mean, Casino Royale today and while I think Craig did a pretty good job (still don't consider him a Bond though), I wasn't too impressed with the movie itself. For one thing it was WAAAAY too long. At 144 feet-dragging minutes it is the longest running Bond film ever.
Here's the main problem with this film: Like Superman Returns (which was also way too long), Casino Royale had one KICK-ASS opening action scene (the construction site foot chase in CS and the plane rescue in SR), but then it started going downhill from there. Except for the mildly engaging airport terrorist chase and a few funny bits of dialog, the rest of CR went nowhere fast.
And the last twenty minutes were excruciatingly boring, VERY predictable and so anti- climactic I still feel like the film never really ended.
Also, I didn't like the fact that they never really had a MAIN villain, like in other Bond films. One that is truly threatening and is dispatched in some spectacular fashion in the end. It was all just a bunch of little villains and all fairly pathetic. For example, the closest the bad guys came to killing Bond was during a poker tournament when they poison his drink. YAWN. None of them were worth a double-O agents time or effort.
But, one thing I did think was pretty cool was how they saved his ''Bond, James Bond'' line and the Bond theme until the very end when he finally ''became'' the Bond he is supposed to be.
It's just to bad that didn't come an hour earlier in the film.
jk90