Could not believe it... (Updated)

Rating: 2/10 (13 November 2006)

OK, I'm going to start this review again by apologising to those who are looking forward to an honest and well-made prequel to the James Bond franchise, and also to those people who were offended by my previous comments which led to an abuse report being filed. I've marked the changes to my previous post with a (*) sign. Again, this is simply a personal opinion...
I dislike this film (*). I've grown up with Bond films (favorites? 'Thunderball', 'From Russia, With Love', 'Goldeneye', 'Live and Let Die') and was amazed with how angry i was after seeing this.
To start - given the budget, they should have done a lot better. The action scenes (save possibly the opening flashbacks and admittedly-quite-awesome parkour sequence) are long and boring - and done for all the wrong reasons. They seem too caught-up with trying to make this the 'biggest, baddest, most explosive, etc' Bond film, and have paid little regard to the actual storyline.
Speaking of which, for the first 40-minutes of non-stop explosions i had literally no idea of what was going on. This probably makes me sound like a bit of a retard, but honestly, all this action happens on screen with very little to motivate it. The screenplay is incredibly bad, and it's probably because of this that the film disappoints so much.
A bit now on the new Bond; i like Daniel Craig, and i don't know how much you can judge from this film. He seems to appear topless a lot (*). More-so, in fact, than any Bond-Girl has in any of the Bond-films thus far (*). He also says some awkward and very un-Bond-like lines, and looks menacing from time to time. Once again, the script really is awful. And he isn't helped with the fact that the Sony laptops and mobile-phones are given more close-ups than he is.
The plot, to be fair, is quite complicated, and a lot to fit into one film. Bond has recently been promoted to a double-agent, and his (as we are constantly (*) reminded) arrogance and ego make him a risk. However, after needlessly killing a UK informant, he is allowed to pursue 'Le Chiffre' - a compromised terrorist-banker (?!) who weeps blood and plays high-stakes poker to raise cash.
I wont spoil the rest - if such a thing is possible - but after many twists and double-crosses, the film ends with the whole experience forcing Bond into his hedonistic and shallow future-image. A little more on this - i know the filmmakers wanted Bond to be more 'gritty' and 'dark' than before (providing a back-drop to the other Bond films), but all they've done is make him less confident, less funny, and considerably uncooler than they can get away with.
I wanted to like this film. In short, i could not wait - after a long 2 1/2 hours - for it's surprisingly unclimactic end (*), and I never once felt like being Bond would be one of the best jobs a man could have - the one thing that the entire franchise depends on. Good points? A couple of good lines during the torture sequence, Eva Green looks hot, and Sebastien Foucan does his own stunts. Other bad points - general plot incoherence, (unforgivably) no Q, and the film manages to go to some of the most exotic locations thinkable, and then makes them look completely ordinary. Again, my apologies...