Double-Oh Yawn

When Daniel Craig debuted as James Bond in 2006's Casino Royale, he was a part of a franchise and character reboot in a way. Bond in Royale is a British agent but not yet with a license to kill. Although Dame Judi Dench kept the roll of M that she had held through Pierce Brosnan's run as Bond, the absurdity and excess of the gadgets and whatnots that wound up sinking 2002's Die Another Day was gone. Although still not very realistic in terms of espionage work, the Craig Bond leaned much more that way. Craig brought the ruthlessness to Bond that Sean Connery had offered in his first appearances, but with an almost sociopathic detachment that made the character interesting and all his own.

His return as Bond in 2008's Quantum of Solace was hampered by the movie and television writer's strike and by its retread of several elements from previous movies. MGM's financial problems delayed Skyfall until 2012, meaning that Craig's fourth Bond movie came out almost a decade after his first. He publicly stated his weariness with the franchise and did not sound like an actor who wanted to play this role any longer. Even if he'd never said that, watching him phone in large sections of 2015's Spectre makes it clear.

Part of the problem is not Craig's. Spectre is too long and overstuffed as director Sam Mendes tries to give nods to different Bond movies, scenes and plot elements from the series. The story involves Bond being phased out as an agent in favor of an electronic intelligence network at the same time he follows clues to the shadowy forces behind the attacks in Skyfall. It tries to wrap elements of Craig's whole run together into a connected arc, suggesting that those shadowy forces have been against him from the start and are at the root of the tragedies he's suffered. It's not a bad idea, but the John Logan script is not nearly focused enough to make good callbacks to three other movies over nine years when they were not necessarily designed to hang together that way. Especially when one of those movies was a seat-of-the-pants rewrite collaboration between the leading man and the director.

But part of the problem is Craig's. Let's say we're watching a scene in which the performer shows little or no emotion. Perhaps the blank affect we see on the screen is intended by the performer. Perhaps it's supposed to be icy calm but seems like blankness because the performer isn't that good. Or perhaps it's a sign that the performer is just doing the minimum necessary to get the checks to clear. If an actor crap-talks his movie and how he can't wait to be done with the character, then an audience is going to be eagle-eyed for signs of that dissatisfaction and how it affects his performance. So guess which of those three "perhapses" is going to seem like the most logical choice?

Craig's contract does call for a fifth movie, so we'll see what happens. Without some kind of change in his outlook about the character he is very handsomely paid to play, those of us schlubs who are paid much less and who yet part with some of those proceeds to watch him might be better served to stay at home and wait for Netflix.