Last night I finally got to see Casino Royale, and let me tell you, despite what the jaded movie critics say, Bond is most definitely back. I haven't felt this level of excitement for a Bond movie since I was a kid.
007 has finally taken up the gauntlet thrown down by those other new JBs on the block (Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne) and met the challenge to show he too can be ruthless and resourceful and kick arse when it's needed (which is a lot of the time).
But the major credit for this revamp must go to the writers. Purvis & Wade have delivered a fast-paced action script with some stunning set pieces. And Paul Haggis (Oscar winner for Crash) has done a top notch 'polish' to make Bond's character chime a little more deeply.
As you'd expect with a Bond film, there are some great one-liners, but what I love about this one is the inventive way they've taken the stock Bond catchphrases and presented them with a new twist. Okay, there's one howlingly bad line, but hey, the rest more than make up for it. This is actually a Bond we care about and who seems a little human; and I can't remember feeling that since Roger Moore took over.
Most people don't realise that making a franchise like Bond work year in year out is a gargantuan task, and it falls to the unsung screenwriters to get it right so that everyone else can take the credit for it.
Taking on the task of delivering the new instalment of a series that comes with as many expectations as this one really is the coal face of screenwriting in my book. Making up a script with your own characters seems like child's play by comparison.
And we screenwriters are the only people who really recognise what a special skill it is. So martinis all round for Purvis, Wade and Haggis. They've done a sterling job. And they won't get a single award for it.
A lot of journalists went out of their way to focus on the mysogyny issue with this film and, in my view, totally miss the point. None more so than ludicrous fuckwit Cosmo Landesman in his Sunday Times review (which also imagines a racist massacre that isn't actually in the film - if you'd actually watched it, Cosmo, you'd have noticed that Bond kills only one person and that is the terrorist he's chasing).
I've always thought the Bond films were sexual, not sexist, laced with a knowing campness, but these days I often find myself asking, like Bill Hicks, 'When was the meeting that decided sex was wrong? Can I still vote?'
I saw Casino Royale with a group of four heterosexual women and one gay man and it was pretty evident from the discussion afterwards that not one of us had a problem with viewing the actors through our sex goggles. In fact, out of the six of us, I thought I got the raw deal!
Which begs the question, when you write, do you consciously try to be PC and not offend, particularly in the area of heterosexual male desire? I've recently been impressed with the TV series Entourage