Director: Marc Forster
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 2.5
Continuation of 2006's Casino Royale has British Secret Agent Bond (Daniel Craig) going after those who killed his chesty gal-pal and, naturally, killing and blowing up people and things indiscriminately. The problem is - as Mr. Ebert pointed out in his perceptive (and humorous) review - this is a fun and proficient action movie when it should be a spy movie: Forster and his screenwriters take the espionage parts out of it, cutting away the potentially brainy moments (like how Bond, with funds cut off, manages to escape from Austria) for ugly rapid-cutting and explosions. Let's be honest: what made everyone love the Bond of old was that solving the mystery and infiltrating the enemy base was secondary to fornicating, drinking, delivering witty one-liners and traveling in style - while the snarkiness needed to be toned down (Pierce Brosnan treated it too much like a joke), the character needs to go back to being clever and the screenwriting needs to be smarter. The fact that Bond only gets a quickie with Gemma Arterton, doesn't even get to second base with Olya Kurylenko and is consistently bloodied and bruised (in real life and on-screen - Craig injured himself three times on the set and needed surgery after the shooting) seems to go against the job description. If I were him I'd consider early retirement.
