CASINO ROYALE – Great stunts (the parkour chase is arguably the best chase–foot or vehicle–in the entire series), great Bond girl (Eva Green IS Vesper Lynd), great story faithfully adapted and expanded on, a great torture scene that went in a completely unpredictable way, and the best debut performance for any James Bond.
QUANTUM OF SOLACE – Awful shaky cam, awful editing, a terrible henchman in Elvis that defies description, and the horrendous treatment of Mathis’ body which Bond would never do. I’ve never hated anything in a Bond movie except for the aforementioned stuff in QOS. They all take away from the solid stunt work (the Bond-Mitchell aerial fight for one), acting, musical score, and story potential that QOS had. Somehow it is not my least favorite Bond movie, but it’s also my hardest to like.
SKYFALL – I’m not on the Skyfall bandwagon that many are. It’s got a lot of good points–Roger Deakins’ cinematography is a star and the best of the series, the Patrice fights are great, Berenice Marlohe’s Severine is terrific, Naomie Harris’ Eve Moneypenny is highly entertaining, and Sam Mendes moves things along well. But something is just missing for me and the one thing I can point to is that Daniel Craig’s Bond still doesn’t feel like Bond–at least in the respect that he is enjoying being Bond. You got the feeling he likes being 007 in Casino Royale but not in Quantum Of Solace although due to story reasons that was understandable, but not here. For all their goodness, Bond and Skyfall just don’t seem to be having fun–not like the old days anyway, and that is a major obstacle for me.
SPECTRE – THIS is like the old days Bond to me. 007 seems to be enjoying himself for the first time since Casino Royale. Hinx is great; it’s really nice to see the return of Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE; the PTS, as always, is entertaining; and Monica Bellucci is absolutely beautiful and sexy. On the downside is the rather drab cinematography which sticks out like a sore thumb especially following on from Deakins’ stellar work on Skyfall, the disappointing unoriginal score by a returning Thomas Newman, the awful falsetto of Sam Smith in his Writing’s On The Wall which ruins an otherwise solid song, and the absolutely idiotic and horrible decision to make Bond and Blofeld “foster brothers”. The less one dwells on that garbage the better. Still I find SPECTRE enjoyable and hope No Time To Die carries on from that, which, from the trailer, seems it will do.
So for me, it’s no contest: Casino Royale all the way.
- Casino Royale
- SPECTRE
- Skyfall
- Quantum Of Solace