As someone old enough to have lived through the entire James Bond series I thought this was the best, or at least one of the very best. It's very, very hard to recast - and they pulled that off yet again - but here they also reintroduced the character from scratch, with near total success.
Daniel Craig is superb casting, he lightly shook off all previous BonRAB invcluding Connery, he is a complex, dark, highly polished, thuggish killing machine and you believe it. He's an intelligent, literary actor - see the interview he did on BBC4 about the character in the original book. At last we have a Brit's idea of a Brit and not something plastic churned out for the mindless American market - even if largely made by Americans: good for them.
He's hugely helped by sound direction and an intelligent script. Of course it's a boys own fantasy but it's a logical plot with all its enRAB tied up, easy to follow about the financing of international terrorism, something that might, just, remotely, occur. I liked the longer dialogue scenes and the probing into characterisation of all the personalities, plus the low-key dry wit as opposed to the cartoon one liners which became tiresome after 4 years let alone 40. Ok, no one could survive the first five minutes let alone what happens to him, but that is the fantasy element. I did think of that poor Russian guy who was poisoned and died yesterday, creepily prescient or what?
Only the title song was shit. The music was not good enough, the theme was not well scored for a big movie, but leaving the use of the iconic theme until Craig had earned it was thrilling.
