Not a promising title, and it’s never really explained either.
Daniel Craig is excellent again (this was his second of five Bond films), but the girl Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko) and the villain Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) are weaker than usual. The former gets shoddy lines and a simplistic “revenge” motivation. The latter isn’t particularly scary or “evil”, just difficult to feel strongly about.
The plot isn’t easy to follow on first viewing, although it works better second time around. It’s extremely violent – sometimes more so than the story demands. Ludicrously, there’s an MI6 agent called Strawberry Fields (played by Gemma Arterton). She comes to a sticky end in a scene that seems to acknowledge the fate of Shirley Eaton’s character Jill Masterson in Goldfinger. The climax is a little underwhelming – perhaps because the stakes aren’t very high. Whereas Bond is usually saving the world from imminent destruction, this time he’s merely battling a nasty crook selling water back to the Bolivian government after creating an artificial drought.
Judi Dench is reliably watchable as M and raises the quality of the film whenever she appears. Her scenes are much needed as there’s sometimes a tendency for it to dip into trashier territory than Casino Royale (2006) or Skyfall (2012).
The title theme by Jack White and Alicia Keys has an appealingly fuzzy riff, but as a song it’s a total mess.
All in all, the least effective of the Daniel Craigs but still well worth a watch or two.
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