I am Bond... born again

"Dry martinis."

"Shaken or stirred?"

"Do I looked like I give a damn?"

Well, I heard this is going to be a very different Bond. He is, tough as nail and extremely dangerous. I am guessing that everyone has either watch the movie or read its review so I will just skip the part of the storyline here.

For the record, I like Brosnan's Bond for no other reason than he is super smooth and suave. I like smooth. Connery's Bond is universally accepted as the best while the others who ever (attempted to) played this characters are pretty forgetable. Unexpectedly, Craig just managed to slips in the ranking between Connery and Brosnan.

This is by far the most realistic Bond film I saw and it calls for a new tougher and harder hero. With a little of Connery's charm, Brosnan's suaveness and a whole new level of unprecendented toughness, Craig will erase all doubt casted upon him as the new Bond. Everyone is loving the new Bond and I do wonder if they are going to maintain the hot-headed character portrayed here or as the films progressed, will he evolve into the Connery's Bond we have all come to know.

As with all recent Bonds, the producers tried to give a Bond girl more equal to Bond himself and they succeded admirably here. But instead of merely being merely smarter or tougher than the classic Bond girls, they create one with strength in character instead and it is easy to understand how Bond could falls in love with her.

I am not sure if I am the only one complaining here but I am not too impressed by the villain though. Sure, at one point he orchestrated the capture and torture of James Bond but beyond that, he never struck me as dangerous. It was also quite a dissappointment that as a professional gambler, he would has such a tell-tale sign of bluffing. It's a wonder Bond is the only one who caught on to it.

I would like to mention about Chow Yuen Fatt in "The God of Gamblers". In that film, the villain observed that Chow has a tendency of subtly touching his ring whenever he bluffs. He tried to uses this knowledge, along with a series of dirty tricks to defeat the God of Gamblers only to find out in the end that Chow deliberately played out this habit for an entire year in order to mislead him. Brilliant... but I guess most of the world are just not obsessed with gambling as the Chinese are?

OK, back to Bond. Like I mentioned earlier, I like smooth. Craig is a little weak when he played smooth but for what he lack in suaveness, he more than make up for in gritty toughness. An enjoyable movie overall.