A decent action film, but a poor Bond film
I should first point out that I had a certain bias against this movie long before I saw it. Why? Daniel Craig strikes me as a poor choice of physical type to play the character of James Bond. It was the production company's decision to terminate Pierce Brosnan's tenure in the role, and frankly, I don't see why. Brosnan, who had been considered for the role many years earlier, finally was available after Timothy Dalton's run, and he was easily as good as any of the previous actors. The Brosnan films ultimately failed to leave a lasting impression because the quality of the scripts was wildly uneven after GoldenEye. After Tomorrow Never Dies featured a Ted Turner/Rupert Murdoch-style media king villain (yawn), The World Is Not Enough brought back some of what the series was meant to have--lots of bullets, gadgets, a few babes, and at least one really creepy villain. Then came Die Another Day and it felt like the most original thing about that movie was the title. Brosnan brought to the role of Bond a great deal of charisma, dashing good looks, and an interpretation that was equal parts brooding and sardonic. His Bond was an MI6 Remington Steele, and that's not a bad thing. What can I say about Craig? He's a competent actor; I saw him in Munich, Fateless, and the (in my mind) rather overrated Layer Cake. None of these were bad films and none of them were made worse for his presence in them. However, he's a blond-haired, blue-eyed guy, and that just doesn't fit the role of Bond. Bond is supposed to be debonair and dark. Moreover, after watching Casino Royale, he doesn't come across as the sort of guy every guy would want to be (and, come on, who didn't think it'd be cool to be James Bond when he was a kid?); he comes across as a guy you wouldn't really want to be on the same cruise liner with. Craig's Bond is largely humorless and cold, lacking the charm of even George Lazenby. I read an article in Wizard magazine that described this movie as a reinvention of the franchise a la Batman Begins; however, I don't think the franchise needed to be reimagined. Unlike the latter Batman films, the Bond movies didn't suffer from having a bad lead; like the Batman films, they did suffer from poor scripts, although, in fairness, Die Another Day looks positively Shakespearean next to Batman and Robin. A nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones is close but not quite on par with an Arnold Schwarzenegger Mr. Freeze.
So besides a dubious choice to play Bond, what of the rest of the movie? Well, it's a modified version of Fleming's original Cold-War era story of a Russian agent of the organization SMERSH who is financing his operations through winnings at high-stakes baccarat games. The villain, Le Chiffre, cries blood out of one of his eyes (not in any visible way, mind you), and he's really good at playing poker. He launders money for terrorist organizations through poker games, and he almost never loses. So he's an evil poker player being backed by some sinister organization that finances bad guys in Africa and other places. Well, maybe it's not as bad as a Ted Turner/Rupert Murdoch villain, but . . . .
There are a number of things that really didn't make a lot of sense to me. (THIS PARAGRAPH IS CHOCK FULL OF SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.) First, the whole business about two kills = "00" status. I always understood the concept of being a 00 agent meaning that you had a license to kill, which meant, more specifically, that the British government would sanction you murdering people in the course of your activities, as long as they were bad guys. So you have to kill two people before you can be authorized to kill people? Does that mean you stand trial for first-degree murder for the first two? Or, as we didn't see that occur here, is it just a cheesy plot device to make the character seem more brutal? Why does someone from the Ministry of Finance or the Treasury or the Chancellor of the Exchequer's office or wherever they dragged up this Vesper Lynd person know so much about 00 agents? "M" is short for someone's name? Really? Finally, what kind of dumbass uses a password like "Vesper"? This guy's a super secret agent? He can hack into a cell phone's SIMM card to get all manner of information but he can't invent a more sophisticated password than that? The bad guys could have guessed that without even trying very hard!
And where were the gadgets? The computer he used to hack the cell phone I mentioned above--well, that's pretty much it. And, frankly, this film could really have used a dose of the humor that Desmond Llewellyn or John Cleese could have provided.
The end credits had the familiar "JAMES BOND WILL RETURN" phrase at the end. Here's hoping that when he does, it's with a more sophisticated script and a revamped attitude.