Yuliya, I'm interested to know what you think of CR having seen it.
Here it is. Beware of spoilers; there will be no spoiler space in my post, the entire post is one big spoiler.
Ace, it's the same I wrote to you, so you can safely skip it; there is nothing in you haven't read.
I tried to keep an open mind. I expected to dislike Craig since I'de seen him before and had my own opinion on his acting range and his ability to play certain parts. However, I tried to keep an open mind. I also expected to like the rest of the movie.
I can't complain about Craig. He wasn't any worse than what I'd expected. I can see why some call him the best Bond ever. Those who do must think Connery's Bond a sissy. Craig's one is dead serious. All the time. He surprised me by proving he could smile. A couple of times. Two or three times the smile even reached his
eyes, but they still remained cold, even when he was looking at the woman he supposely loved. I think the technical term is acting from the eyebrows up.
He's just too cold and too mean.
He also has no chemistry with either of his women. I don't know whether he's the only one to blame. I didn't like Vesper; she was also cold, and while gorgeous, not really sexy, even in those slinky dresses that were supposed to make the entire room look at her. The other woman was better, but they still had no chemistry. The sex scenes were very short and tame, though I shouldn't complain about it, either. If they were longer, they'd be even more boring, and if Bond were naked... Craig shouldn't be, but later about that. The women weren't naked, either. I wonder if the sex scenes were cut because they were so boring, the way they were cut in
The Bourne Identity. (This reference is to the new
The Bourne Identity movie, with Matt Damon - sex scenes in the movie were so boring, some of them had to be cut.)
That's about as much as I can say about Craig. He's definitely worse than Connery or PB. I can't compare him with Moore; he's completely different. I don't remember Dalton's movies very well, but Dalton is incomporably more charming. Lazenby - I don't know. He didn't act very well, but he made an honest attempt and probably did his best. At least he was trying to portray a range of emotions, whiele Craig did not, whether by design or by lack of ability.
Now about the movie. Weren't they going to make a smaller scale movie? Of course, nothing in it is as grand as the Ice Palace, but they did blow up a fuel truck and sunk a building in Venice, so I'd say overall it's no less grand than, say, TWINE.
I really didn't like the action sequences. There were 3 major ones - a chase through some jungle, on foot, a fuel truck chase through an airfield, and the sinking of the building in Venice.
The very fast-paced chase through the jungle looked very cartoonish to me, probably because it involved jumping from one construction crane to another, down, rolling down the steps, and such. They do those things in cartoons all the time and no one gets hurt. Same here. To my husband it reminded the opening scene from
Men In Black-1, in which Will Smith was chasing a very fast alien up and down the building. I can see his point.
The fuel track chase was boring, probably because it was too long, but I'm sure there are other reasons. It involved a spectacular shot of a car blown in the air, rotating in the trail of a landing plane, but that didn't salvage the scene. It was also very straight and very predictable. But then, the entire movie is rather predictable, even to my husband, who hadn't read the novel.
The final chase that ends with sinking a house in Venice is visually spectacular, but it doesn't save the movie, either.
The writing is poor. The dialogues could use considerably more work. There are a handful of good lines, but Craig doesn't do them justice. I think he lacks sense of humor, at least as an actor. Another actor would make some of those lines shine. Same goes for Vesper. Their dialogues are particularly unimpressive, probably because I expect more of them. Was it Ferstein who wrote the dialogues for the previous movies or PB who delivered the lines? Everything else is the same...
I wonder if I'm correct in understanding what "gritty" means. Yeah, I looked it up. "Having strong qualities of tough uncompromising realism." Well, it has that. In spades. But I wonder if that's how it needs to be to be called gritty.
Bond drowns a man in a toilet - well, in a sink, but that's still in a toilet. That's how he gets his 00 status. Bond strangles a man with his bare hands and we see his feet jerking until he's dead. Bond realizes he's poisoned and rushes to the restroom, on his way grabbing a glass and a salt shaker off a table - I'd leave it there; do we have to follow inside and see him lean over the sink to be perfectly sure how he's going to get rid of the poison? In every movie out of the last 20 we'd see the bathroom door close behind him - cut to Mr. Bond, elegant as always, sitting himself back at the card table - cut to the astonished face of Le Chiffre. I don't need the toilet scene to tell me what happened nor do I need the scene that followed - but of that later. But then, Craig is not elegant anyway... At least, they didn't show the entire process in the bathroom. I'm thankful.
Speaking of cards - not only does Bond play Texas Hold 'Em High Poker, he doesn't even know how to do it. My husband caught a serious mistake, and doesn't even play poker, though I think he watches tournaments on TV sometimes. But I digress...
The torture scene came right from the one of Scorcese's movies about Italian Mafia. It's dark and ugly. Craig really shouldn't be naked. Remember the scene in Terminator where he gets through time to the past (our present) naked? Arnie looked better. However, Craig reminded me not of Arnie but of Stallone, when he was being tortured in one of Rambo movies; especially his half-scream, half-laugh and his twisted mouth. I think they overdid on the realism. It's too serious for this kind of movie, but it's so serious you don't believe it anyway. It didn't make me cringe, want to avert my eyes, feel sorry for Bond; I was simply whiling my time, unmoved. It's just ugly. And IMO, doesn't play that well.
Now about the scene I mentioned earlier. The final spoiler. It should give you a good laugh. It's also the only gadget we see in the movie. I wonder why they said there weren't any.
After Bond realized he was poisoned, he tried to throw up, and apparently it didn't help. So, after that he rushed to his car, where he had some antidote injector thingy and a portable defibrillator device the size of a portable CD player. He used the antidote and was trying to administer a jolt to himself to prevent the heart failure. Guess what? The device failed due to a disconnected wire and Bond went into a cardiac arrest. I was watching that with one thought only - "They've got to be joking." Unfortunately, they were deadly serious.
Don't worry about Mr. Bond, though; Vesper arrived just in time to connect the wires and press the blue button, upon which Bond opened his blue eyes in the best tradition of Sleeping Beauties and asked Vesper whether she was all right. No kisses, thank god (see my opinion on sex scenes and chemistry.) He just rushed back to the card table. Quoting a Russian poet I doubt anyone have read, "It would've been funny if it hadn't been that sad." This is the highlight of the movie, in a sense, though.
Overall, one of the main problem of the movie is that they didn't know what they wanted it to be. It's ragged and doesn't have a smooth pace. Some scenes would have played better if we knew they weren't supposed to be serious - such as the one above. But it was filmed too straight to be a joke.
I think that's about it. I can give the movie very little praise. Among the assets are spectacular views (apparently, Montenegro, where they play poker, is a beautiful place; I want to go there!) and the title sequence - IMO, one of the best.
When the movie was over, my husband, who read the reviews and decided he wanted to see the movie, apologized. Just in time - I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I was biased.
You've got my opinion, so no. But to elaborate - what nominations do you mean? BAFTA? I particularly don't think it awards for Best British Film (providing there were other British films this year,) Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Best Screenplay.
I don't know about the rest, especially about special filmmaking awards - stunts, set design, etc. Maybe it deserves those, some scenes were well done, it's not their fault that the movie ruined them. Like I said, the title sequence is magnificent, I really enjoyed it, but I don't know what that award would be. Not the song - the graphic design that went with it.
He's just too cold and too mean.
Talk about redundant scenes. LOL I remember thinking, what have I gotten myself into here. I bet Pierce had similar thoughts. 
