Daniel Craig as Bond - your feelings?

I checked back three pages, and saw no sign of a Casino Royale thread, and I wanted to hear your views.

I was really against Craig as the new Bond, then last week, ITV1 showed Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life with him in it, and I'm now willing to give him a go.

 

Well, I'll watch it because it is a Bond film. I'll form an opinion after I've seen it.

 

Ditto, it's Bond and I will be seeing it, tickets booked for 16th

Verdict still out on Daniel Craig, hope he's good, still think that they should have done another Bond with Pierce Brosnon before they did Casino Royale, but apreciate the Prequel scenario !

Still think that Daniel doesn't have the Bond look though, Bond was always dark, also a shame that Ewan didn't accept the role!

 

Well, Roger Moore was good as Bond and he had brown hair.
I agree Borsnan should have done one more film.

I'm going to see it tomorrow, so I will post a review up in the film thread.

 

The whole new bind sounds a bit naff. NO GADGETS!?!?! WTH MAN!

 

I originaly thought that he just looked wrong for the role, but after seeing the trailer, Ive changed my mind. Also, the film looks a lot more like some of the earlier Bonds, a bit more gritty and hands on.

 

Will reserve Judgment until I have seen it tomorrow night and post my views here, but after all it is BOND and like Star Wars a must see at the cinema on a big screen EVENT FILM.

After all, if you haven't experienced Star Wars on the big screen, then you haven't seen it at all, but then again if you haven't seen Star Wars at least twice, then you still have not seen it properly!

 

Saw it today.
I thought he was good.

 

None of the voting options fitted in with my opinion because I was very convinced by Craig's casting from the word Go!! In fact I remember seeing the trailer for Layer Cake before its release and I thought to myself then that he'd make an excellent Bond.

Thus far it seems I was correct to think that way, although I'll have to wait till Sunday before I can confirm that to myself

 

Ok, just returned from the Odeon.

Just wish to point out that firstly I was quite negative on Daniel Craig as choice for Bond and I am very critical of the way the whole affair has been handled.

However, I do have an open but quite cynical mind.

OK,so my review of the film is quite simple and I can sum it up quite economically.

The film and Daniel Craig are both SUPERB.

But, don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself, you owe it to yourself.

Have fun.

P.S. If you've not seen BORAT yet, then you should.

 

BLOODY BRILLIANT!! I too, had my reservations about Daniel Craig playing Bond, but after seeing it yesterday, what can I say? He's my new favourite Bond - yes, I like him better than Sean

The film was INCREDIBLE!! I loved the rougher, edgey-er, more ruthless Bond. Having no gadgets seem to make the film better - less cheesy. And some of the lines - PRICELESS!!

Can't wait for the next one (which I hear is already in the works - Yay!).

 

I didn't reserve any judgement either on him as I like the character of Bond and not the actor playing it and I thought he was absolutely, utterly sexy in Tomb Raider. I very much loved Brosnan and after seeing the movie last Thursday by accident - I wanted to see something else but it was replaced by Casino Royale - my second biggest grudge against it was that Craig beefed up quite a bit. Fortunately, it takes nothing away from the excellence of the film. My first and biggest grudge was the totally limited, almost non-existent screen-time of the Aston Martin DBS!!! Total disgrace. I love Aston Martins! I wanted more but got nothing basically.

I thought CR was thumbs up. I didn't like the title song but hey, whatever; it was still a lot better than Madonna's rubbish. The movie would have been 5 stars for me had I found Craig as irresistable as James Bond had always been for me from Ian Fleming's books thus. I'm rather glad that anti-Craig Bond-fans were proven wrong and the franchise did deserve this hit. The rest of the cast was great too, although M's character got a bit wasted imo. I'm also happy David Arnold stayed to write the score. He tends to make a good job of it.

So, I loved it and am hoping to go and see it again once I'm back in town.

 

If you see 1 film this year, then see CASINO ROYALE, but if you see 2, then see BORAT !

 

Hot, Damn Hot!

 

david arnolds score was incredible,given his last couple of drumnbass efforts.
but i didn't like daniel craig.
he lacked the intensity and the mannered grace that brosnan had.
i buy craig as a hired thug,or a heavy like in layer cake and the brilliant munich,but as a commander in the royal navy?
he just lacks that essential bond ingrediant.
they should have gone for clive owen or rupert everett.

 

What!!!!!!!!!! Jamie Richards, you should be ashamed, your are of course entitled to your opinion (even if you are wrong!)

Clive Owen is a poor actor at best and Rupert Everett is ***!!!!!!!

So you want a poor or *** Bond then!!!!!

 

He was fantastic in Layer Cake

 

Seen Casino Royale, and it is a great film, though I did find myself missing the usual Bond formulae, and some of the gadgets.

I have read Ian Fleming's novel, and enjoyed seeing how closely this movie followed it.

Strangely, I accepted Craig as James Bond for the first part of the film, achieving his Double-O prefix. But later, although I was watching him and enjoying the movie, it occurred to me that he was a great lead in a movie, and I was accepting him as the protagonist saving the day but for instance at the airport, he might as well have been playing Bruce Willis' John McClane in Die Dard 2 - he just didn't feel like Bond.

 

I thought Craig did a very good job. It was a different take on the character, but given the awful over-indulgence of the latter Brosnan films, it was a necessary move.

 

I agree with the gentleman or lady who said he can play the role of a hired thug but not as Commander James Bond, Royal Navy and MI6/SIS Intelliegence Officer. I saw Casino Royale and there is no argument that Daniel Craig is good actor who is a good sprinter too from his running scenes. What makes himn unsuitable as Bond is his face, which to put it in a politically correct manner is aesthetically challenged. He has the wrinkles of a 50 year old in the body of a 38 year old. He has big elephant ears and his neck is too short so in the scene of him in the Bahamas doing his version of Ursula Andress coming out of the sea a la Dr. No (1962), he looks like a turtle. Also his enthusisatic weight lifting has made him look grotesque as if he is on steroids. The best Bond is undoubtedly Sean Connery who had the presence and X factor only seen in Mafia Bosses and real life high ranking Spooks (Intelligence Officers). Daniel Craig at 5 feet 11 inches tall is also the shortest actor to play Bond to date. There are also quite a few glaring errors in the movie. For example, MI6 is not the Security Service as seen on the laptop screen but rather the Secret Intelligence Service. At the start of the film, Bond half drowns his target in a wash basin in a public toilet and fails to check if his target is really dead which is unprofessional. The target revives to try to kill him but his quick reflexes save his life and he opens fire with one hand. Here is the error, because I presume the Director wanted him to shoot that way to look stylish for artistic reasons. However, anyone who has been trained to handle weapons like pistols and other small arms would never fire with one hand (unless the other hand is badly injured). Professionals use the two hand grip with a Weaver stance. Also in the Embassy shootout in Madagscar, Bond shoots on the run. It is an old FBI maxim to never shoot on the move simply because when you fire from an unstable platform, your chances of hitting the target are very low. He also has a very bad attitude to food and wine and tells the waiter when asked if he wants his Vodka Martini shaken or stirred, "Does it look like I care?" To be true to Ian Fleming's creation, Bond is always the gourmet and wine connoisseur. My friend, Patrick Glendinning who fought communist terrorists in the jungles of Malaya with the 7th Gurkha Rifles told me once, "When we were on leave in Singapore, we stayed in Raffles and lived like KINGS! You see we never knew whether we would be alive or dead the next minute when we were in the jungle." People like Bond who kill or be killed and are in high risk jobs tend to be somewhat hedonistic in nature. The authentic Bond would never say "Does it look like I care?" or when asked about the lamb, reply "Skewered." I shall write more in due course. Meanwhile, I am going to have my Vodka Martini shaken not stirred and personally, I prefer Stolichnaya Vodka from Russia. Cheers! Dr. Michael Lim The Travelling Gourmet

 

it's only a Movie and entertainment !

It's not like it's Star Wars

P.S. I do agree that Daniel is not really as good looking as Bond should be, after all Women love him and Men want to be him!

 

I. Just. Don't. Like. Sean Connery. Neither as Bond nor as an actor. He had some seriously low ebbs as Bond which made Brosnan look like a god even in Die Another Day. I read Fleming's books before seeing a Bond movie and in my head though Brosnan wasn't everything but he was pretty near to what I imagined.

That said, Daniel Craig pumped up doesn't look any good. Definitely not something ALL women swoon over. I know. I couldn't.

And yeah. That 'Does it look like I care?' line was a stab in the back.

 

In reference to the latter part of TheTravellingGourmet's post, Daniel Craig's Bond probably has more in common with a Len Deighton secret agent, eg. Harry Palmer (as played by Michael Caine) than an Ian Fleming one.

There is no way you can take Craig for a former RNVR Commander, unless he got a field commsion from being enlisted; and (though you can put it down to security) he mis-identifies his parent's nationalities to Vesper, should be Scottish and Swiss, not whatever this Bond came up with.

 

I thought the film was pretty darn good considering. I thought Brosnan was awesome so I just tried to not compare him and treat CR as a film in it's own right.

But how can you not love the mighty Sean Connery? He's made a career out of doing bad impressions of his own voice! Come on, a Russhian Shhhhubmarine commander with an odd Scottish accent, what more could you want?

 

Aye, he was great.
He did an Irish American Cop with a Scottish accent also.

The rumour was he wasn't actualy able to do accents.
My opinion is he just didn't want to, because he was so great his accent just fitted.