measure of comfort rating at 2.3

Rating: 7/10 (23 November 2008)

Great actions sequences and very exotic locations but this Bond movie, despite the best efforts of the director and the cast, seems to fall short of reaching the emotional and visceral depth that it sets out to achieve.
The story begins with MI5 infiltrating a secret society of money men, which sounds very promising, but then the mystery is revealed when the society turns out to be this very drab looking Frenchman and his lanky sidekick. It is then divulged that their next target is to buy some land in Bolivia and sell water to the locals, now maybe I missed something but no matter how immoral it may seem, selling water to the indigenous people of Bolivia is hardly a plot to take over the world.
This takes all of 55 minutes to become clear, and what transpires during this time is a subplot involving Judi Dench as M questioning Bond's legitimacy as an agent, or perhaps double agent and a side story involving the new girl Olga seeking retribution for her families death.
At the core of this movie lies the tentative narrative of Bond's love for the departed Vesper from Casino Royale, we are supposedly seeing Bond evolving from ruthless killer with a heart to ruthless killer who is heartless. Though this seems to be a lose strand which takes up too much time and leads to too many close up of Daniel Craig looking forlorn and embittered.
Now I think the debate as to whether Daniel Craig is a good enough Bond is over, he IS Bond and he has made the part his own, as Bond he brings so much credibility to the character that the lack lustre plot is almost forgiven. Now the word plot is used very loosely here, there is a plot but it seems to be so thin that even the actors have forgotten it and instead just gaze lovingly into Daniel Craig's baby blue eyes.
The action sequences seem to be the direction for the plot as every improbable action sequence follows another. Maybe this is because there isn't much of a plot and that if Bond really wanted to save some time he should have just flown straight to the Bunker in Bolivia in the first place and blown it up. This would have saved us the bother of watching this movie and saved the dwindling budget of British central intelligence.
Even though the last remark was made jokingly, essentially had Bond done this from the outset the movie would have still been the same. For over the course of the movie Bond does very little by way of spying or infiltrating but merely appears in places and punches people.
The director Marc Forster tries to take Bond into new artistic directions, as there are some very credible action sequences, most noticeably the opening 15 minutes. However there are some action sequences that just don't hit home, namely the sequence where Bond punches his way out of the opera house to the strains of Puccinni (this is just not Bond's style). Then there is a plane scene which harks back to the days of Piece Brosnan looking forever unshaken and unstirred. And finally the climactic explosions which is taken straight out of the DIY Bond handbook.
From the opening sequence to the very last frame the movie seems to be striving for some sort of artistic resonance but fails with every shift in the scene. All in all a brave attempt by the Bond team to add depth to the character, but it seems their good work was undone by poor script writing and an over emphasis on mood.
Weaker than Casino Royale, better than Golden Eye still not quite The Bourne Supremacy.