"Some men are coming to kill us. But we're going to kill them first."

Rating: 8/10 (10 January 2019)

You know, I have to laugh. In the opening action sequence, James Bond (Daniel Craig) runs a motorcycle into a waist high abutment in order to catapult the bike away, and him onto the top of a moving train in order to get at the bad guy. He's shot by his partner, falls over a hundred feet into a river, and then goes over a waterfall. Given up for dead, you know as the viewer he's going to pop up again somehow, and when he does, he's shown panting for breath after doing some laps in a swimming pool! How does that make any kind of sense? I guess we aren't supposed to think about it.
But the thing is, if you put all the James Bond films into a list here on IMDb, then rank them in order of viewer ratings, it's "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall" that occupy the top two positions. I think that's more a reflection of the audience's need and desire for large scale action set pieces and impossible stunts than for the actor portraying Bond, although you do have to give Daniel Craig credit where credit's due. He's taken the character to a much darker place without an array of goofy gadgets, even if I question the manner in which he was able to smoke out 'Granborough Road' out of an impossible series of encrypted graphics. To my mind, it would help if Craig would crack a smile every now and then to show that he's human; I can't imagine anyone being so serious for any length of time without the need for some kind of emotional release.
However Bond does go in the opposite direction even more when at the finale, M (Judi Dench) dies, and Bond cries! That's something I thought I'd never see, and perhaps confirmation that Double 0-7 does have a reservoir of emotion somewhere inside. With the franchise getting ready to release another picture in 2020, It will be interesting to see how Daniel Craig performs in "Bond 25", almost a full decade after his character couldn't pass the MI6 physical or qualify on the shooting range.