Daniel Craig is So Damn Hot
Sunday, November 19, 2006 at 11:42PM 
Yes, Layer Cake started the story, and then Munich added fuel to the fire, but Casino Royale has absolutely done me in. Who is that devilishly-handsome man giving James Bond his best rendition in recent memory? Daniel Craig, Daniel Craig, Daniel Craig.
First of all, Casino Royale is likely to be the best Bond film ever: classy, old-school, and simple. The Brosnan-era featured extravagantly outlandish plots along the lines of harnessing the sun into a laser that will zap major cities, giving a single fiendish mastermind world domination. That’s such Moore-era decadence – let’s get back to the basics. (I do need to mention that I am also a sucker for the original Casino Royale – the spoof on James Bond films from 1967 with Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress heading up an all-start cast of kooky cameos. Let’s not forget this classic psychedelic offering, there’s good stuff there too.) The new Casino Royale offers a much cooler, European-elegant idea: why not foil terrorism by winning $150M in a poker game? It’s just what Connery would have wanted: the cars, the booze, the gowns, the white sands of the tropics, and the villas of old Europe. The women are gorgeous, but few - and modest, and even Felix Leiter makes a reappearance. And then there’s Mr. Craig.
I don’t like pretty men. In fact, I prefer them rugged, burly, a bit haggard, totally worldly, and sexy as hell. Daniel Craig finally takes the pretty-boy out of the James Bond role, and while the verdict is still out for most people, he’s my hands-down favorite. The quick-reflexes, the terse delivery, the dry wit, the hard drinking, the swagger, and the devil-may-care… He’s icy, arrogant, and distant in the typical Bond manner, but he also offers a believable flicker of an icy, arrogant, distant man having his heart unexpectedly melt when he meets the *right* girl. (This is the kind of story that all of us *right* girls secretly hope for when we start dating those bad, but irresistible guys with these kinds of red flags.) Yes, James Bond falls in love, and I have to say that the Daniel Craig-Eva Green combination is electric – they’re both beautiful, but not perfect, and finally a Bond-girl is given a true even-standing with her leading man.
Bond-style also never looked so good: Daniel Craig has some serious muscles, and boy do they look good in a tuxedo. (Actually, they're even better out of a tuxedo.) He goes from casual-chic, to sweaty-in-the-jungle, to tailored Brioni without losing a step. Capping the old-school Bond feeling is the English haberdashery dark blue three-piece suit Craig wears in the final scene as he coldly dispenses with a little revenge. He definitely dresses for the occasion. The women are in the usual clingy-silk gowns that always seem to look like nightgowns on anyone outside of a film set, and yet refreshingly, it seems that the years of naked girls running through Bond films are over. Even the genius graphic sequence of the opening credits forego the traditional nude-girls-in-shilouette with backlighting in favor of bright casino colors and guys doing karate moves. Perhaps the Fleming-Broccoli partnership is realizing that women love James Bond too? This one is definitely for the ladies...
Reader Comments (3)
Que demande le peuple!
Lilou
Que demande le peuple!
Lilou
Que demande le peuple!
Lilou