Casino Royale

I can admit it-- I had reservations about Daniel Craig as James Bond. I was not rabidly against him, as many Bond movie fans were. As a matter of fact, I saw him in Layer Cake and thought he was a pretty good actor. I just did not think he was right for the direction that Bond had gone in recent years.

However, I was more than willing to put my reservations on hold until I saw some clips, reviews, etc. If the clips and reviews were unfavorable to me, I would be reticent to see the movie even though I am a big fan of the Bond movies in general.

When I started seeing the initial reviews, pictures, and then the first clips from the production, my mind started to change. The new, harder, simpler direction seemed perfectly suited to Craig's acting skills and his "look." Further, they wrote the movie around his talents, taking advantage of his more rugged looks, his ability to explode into action, and his way of smoldering under the surface.

The fact that they did away with Q and the gadgets (for the most part), as well as the more cartoonish violence of the most recent Bond films (as well as the Moore Bond), aided this approach.

I left the theatre very impressed with the movie and Craig as Bond. It worked. I hope that this more low-tech approach and strong character and story-driven plot will continue in his further adventures as Bond. This same approach helped revitalized the Batman movie franchise to great affect (see Batman Begins).

This being said, I did not like everything about the movie. I guessed very early on that one of the "good guys" would turn bad; I just wasn't sure how bad that character would turn out (the actual villain or somehow duped into helping the villains). Also, I felt the Texas Hold'em sequence went on far too long. They definitely could have cut about 10 minutes out of that-- we got the point that it was going to come down to Bond and the bad guy. It had to. I was also surprised when they mentioned that it only took two confirmed kills to become a double-O. That seems awfully low to me.

This was not enough to mar my overall enjoyment of the film or the new direction of the Bond franchise. I definitely recommend the current movie to fans of action movies in general, and to James Bond specifically.

As a side note, here are my favorite Bonds:

1. Sean Connery. The first and the one to whom all others will always be compared.
2. Daniel Craig. This is provisional on the movies he stars in continuing to use his talents and stay down to earth. QoS wasn't great entry, but Craig was good in it. And Skyfall is quite good, solidifying Craig's place as "1b" to Connery's "1a".
3. Pierce Brosnan. I thought he was #2 until Craig came along. His first two Bond movies were quite good, I thought, and he played the the suave side of Bond without equal.
4. Timothy Dalton. On rewatching his movies, they were well ahead of their time. Dalton plays Bond with a sense of anger that those before him didn't have. They did some of the same things when Brosnan and Craig took over.
5. Roger Moore. I always thought he was too old for the role, that his movies were too cartoonish, and relied too much on the gadgets. However, they were fun and I was always entertained.
6. George Lazenby. I liked the movie itself, but I thought Lazenby was dull.
7. All others, including Woody Allen. Um, no. Just... no.