The Times: "A Bond film too good to be true"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,10653-2448578.html

Opinion - Giles Coren

A Bond film too good to be true

BY HECK, DANIEL CRAIG looks nice in his pants. I haven’t fancied a Bond so much since David Niven. It’s mostly the fact that he has a proper chest. Connery’s you couldn’t see for the rogue pubes on northward manoeuvres, Roger Moore’s was so slack that his nipples were lower than his waistband (though I’ll grant you the waist on those trousers was high) and Pierce Brosnan had that old-man-sucky-tummy-puff-yer-chest-out thing going on, so that he appeared to have an actual embonpoint. But Daniel, with those hoddy’s shoulders and the square-cut trunks . . . yum, yum.

And it’s so clever the way Casino Royale is actually the first Bond story so it’s as if all the other films haven’t been made yet, so the clichés aren’t clichés, and he’s making the legend right before our eyes. And this means that the film is no longer forced to be a parody of itself with silly gadgets and mad stunts. And when he is asked if he wants his vodka martini shaken or stirred he says, listen to this, listen to this, he says: “Do I look like I give a damn?” And it’s so cool how he has this really pikey way of walking, rolling his shoulders like a street hoodlum, so that you can actually believe he is capable of real violence. And then he flips his car in the air and it rolls over seven times, which is the world record, the previous record having been set by a stunt driver from Top Gear, making the film easily as exciting and grown up as that excellent show.

And it’s so ironic how in Dr No, the first Bond film, Ursula Andress came out of the water in a bikini, whereas here it is Bond himself, which shows that men are now considered totty, which I didn’t know. And although Craig is not as classically handsome as some of the previous James Bonds (such as Woody Allen) he’s got these piercing blue eyes which more than make up for it.

And then, of course, there’s his sensitivity. He really cares. Like when poor Vesper Lynd is upset by seeing him kill someone, so he kisses her fingers and, and, and get this: even though they’re in the shower, she KEEPS HER CLOTHES ON! Because this is 2006 and it’s all about respect. And Bond is vulnerable. He actually bleeds. Which is completely unique and hasn’t been said of a Bond since Timothy Dalton.

Yes, indeed, Casino Royale is the best Bond film yet. I can’t wait to see it. Sorry, did you think I already had? What, just from the fact that I know what happens in every frame on both literal and metatextual levels? That’s just from a cursory read of the newspapers. A read which gave me the distinct impression that everyone has seen it apart from me. Which is odd, because it’s still not out for another week.

But the problem is that it sounds so good, I’m not sure I want to spoil it by going to see it.

Take the aforementioned shower scene: in Allison Pearson’s column in the Daily Mail last week I learnt that, as Bond kisses those fingers, Vesper says: “If all that was left of you was your smile and little finger, you’d still be more of a man than anyone I’ve ever met.” And, I swear, I got a lump in my throat. I almost wept. Just as I laughed when I first heard the martini gag (some weeks ago).

Why on earth would I want to go and see the film? I have already been thrilled, moved and made to laugh. I can now only be disappointed. Casino Royale simply can’t be as good as the film I have constructed in my mind from what I have read. In the same way that previous generations of Bond fans have trotted along to count off the familiar, reassuring clichés, I would now be going along merely in order to count off the consecutive deconstructions of those clichés — as moribund a cultural exercise as watching any of the previous Bonds.

Some things are just better imagined than experienced. Sex, for example. It was years before that got to be as exciting as I had imagined it would be when I was indulging purely in guesswork based on hearsay. And what longed-for summer holiday turns out to be as good as you thought it was going to be back in grisly old January? What celebrity isn’t shorter and more boring when you meet them than they seemed at one remove? Whose Millennium night outstripped expectations? And I’ll wager you are having more fun thinking about Christmas now than you will have when it finally arrives.

The creation of false expectations is a risky business. People frequently write to me to say that a restaurant I described as serving “food so good you’ll want to tear off your head to build a bigger mouth” turned out to be a bit disappointing. Well, of course it did. But the readers who didn’t go (99 per cent of them) had a great meal.

Still, I’m sure I’ll see the film, if for no other reason than that, at 38, Daniel Craig is the last 007 who will be older than me. The next Bond actor will make me feel very ancient indeed. No doubt he is currently the age I was when I trotted reluctantly into The Spy who Loved Me at the Hendon Classic in 1977, worried that it was going to be a love film. It’s probably one of the dancing boys from Billy Elliott, or the ginger kid out of Harry Potter. Except that by then he will probably have been signed up to star in remakes of all seven Hogwarts movies, this time from a grittier, more realistic perspective.