I was impressed with the film. I could easily see Timothy Dalton's portrayals being a continuation of the man Daniel Craig sets up. The entire film works towards the climax at the end, which is...breathtaking. The entire movie is about character development, and it works. And all the necessary bits are present -- the luxury, the roughness, the killing, the martinis.
My only complaints are that the title sequence didn't have naked woman cavorting in surreal pools of water and that Chris Cornell's "You Know my Name" still sort of lacks the class of the female spy-themes of yore.
But this is a good movie. And now something for the peanut gallery:
If you aren't a fan of Bond, and have dismissed it as some stupid franchise, watch Casino Royale. I'm sick and tired of trying to find Bond fans among my cliques. There are hardly any, so I demand that some be recruited. My friends either brush Bond off because of what they've seen on TV, because they think it's farcical, or because they just don't have the class necessary to enjoy a high-class spy thriller. It's a damn good movie (up to 8.1/10 on IMDB) and it shows the true Bond character -- the one Ian Fleming wrote, which is a bit far away from the techno-thriller one-liner womanizing Bond the movies have come to sculpt. This is history.