Wow! This Bond film is intelligent and has real integrity. Daniel Craig is spot on as Bond, and gets a believable character across on screen, even – dare I say it – overtaking Connery, the ultimate Bond. He fits the role perfectly, and is tough and tender, the perfect combination for manhood...
Where Craig has the advantage is in an updated, well-written script by Purvis and Wade, incorporating current themes of terrorism and attempted spy poisoning. The bad guy, Le Chiffre, is strange without being ludicrous, and the screenplay does without the usual schoolboy humour, and without the naughty schoolboy antics with Q, who does not appear at all in this film. Miss Moneypenny is also absent. She is unnecessary because this Bond gets to develop a real emotional response to a believable woman, with whom he has a meaningful relationship. Bond does not have to contend with ridiculous gadgets, like exploding pens and wristwatches, yes I know they are really used by the secret service, but they strike audiences as pretty far fetched. Instead, the screenplay relies on Craig’s physicality, and the film is a celebration of masculinity. Craig is stacked, powerful and fast. The opening chase of a bomb maker has them both (and brilliant stunt men obviously) running, leaping, hurling themselves off and through things, throwing punches and getting unbelievably bashed about. The chase through and up, on a building site, leaping on and off cranes at stomach-lurching heights, is almost unbearable as they both smash repeatedly into the unforgiving metal of the cranes etc. This is a really tough opening, and the tension rarely lets up.
It’s a great relief when there is a quiet moment of dialogue so the audience can get its breath back, and to have the story presented, but it’s not for long. Craig next has a fuel tanker to deal with and there is plenty of great stunt driving here, a sick-making fight with the driver, and enough screeching and skidding to make any lad happy.
Casting is excellent with Vesper Lynd as the girl he falls for. The dialogue is excellent between the two, and a relationship of equals is set up. Bond girls have gone from Pussy Galore, smart and beautiful, then been airheads, just bodies, as we moved through the decades of feminism and post-feminism to become quasi-men and not credible women. Vesper brings us back to the essential woman by being bright, capable and yet feminine, and more likely to be identified with by a female audience than one who shoots machine guns and karate kicks her way through the film. However, the pre-sex scene in the hospital room looks ludicrously uncomfortable and unexpectedly rough, as Vesper and Bond crash into things, and fall hard onto the floor. The actors in this film must be black and blue. This terribly uncomfortable looking sex scene follows the exquisitely tender moment, in the shower scene, which is deeply moving. I want to see this film again, soon, it’s compulsive.
I have only one query – Vesper has the bank account number, Bond has the password. The money gets wired to the bank. It doesn’t arrive. There’s no explanation for the way the double cross with the money happens, timing wise. If it got put into the wrong account in the first place, that would account for it, but in the chronology of the story, I can’t see it. Pay attention on this point. I can’t fault the film otherwise, and I am a dedicated Bond fantasist. The dialogue between M and Bond is interesting, and points up his isolation and a communication problem which is like a marriage; he comes to her twice, to speak to her; each time she bawls him out but does not hear what he has come to say. Both remain ignorant of each other's designs and desires. I really liked the way the Bond motifs were regarded but played down. He orders a different drink but, when offered the usual ‘shaken not stirred’ line Craig says ‘do I look as if I give a damn’, very funny. And his line ‘the name’s Bond. James Bond’ is saved for the final clip. Classy.
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