Well, of the recent films, Brosnan and Craig, I have to say
Casino Royale was my favourite. Having the beautiful Eva Green in it helped as well.
And for once a 'Bond girl' was given a central role in the plot development.
Quantum of Solace bored me a little, although further character back stories, as started in
Casino Royale, helped drive the plot along. One hopes more of Bond and M's back stories will be revealed in
Skyfall. Bond can be so much more than just cartoonish villains, OTT gadgets and arm candy. Daniel Craig is however showing signs that he could be as good a Bond as Connery.
Not much of a fan of the Brosnan films, he was too smooth and there was little of the cold, hard emotionlessness of the Bond as written by Fleming. Something we are seeing with Craig's portrayal. For some reason, with Brosnan, I get the impression I'm watching Tony Blair play Bond. And that invisible car was just silly.
From the Roger Moore era, there's little better than his first outing in
Live and Let Die, although I do like
A View To A Kill simply for Christopher Walken's excellent villain, Max Zorin. Overall though the Roger Moore era can be characterised by big production values at the expense of plot and character development. Oh, and too much of the innuendo type humour.
As for Connery, still not bested and still the closest characterisation to that as written by Fleming. Which is understandable as Fleming had a hand in casting Connery and also oversaw the scripts for the first three films. My favourite Connery film is
Goldfinger, probably the most faithfully accurate Bond film, character wise, when compared to the book on which it was based. Although the glaring plot hole in the book (regarding how Auric Goldfinger would actually get all the gold out of Fort Knox) was fixed in the film by having AG plan to irradiate the gold in Fort Knox rather than steal it, thus massively increasing the value of
his own gold.
As for Lazenby, well, missed opportunity perhaps for him. Being given a seven film contract but walking away after just one. Who knows how he would've developed as a Bond if he hadn't taken the poor advice of his agent and walked away after
OHMSS.
Finally Dalton. To my mind he just didn't fit the role and seemed ill at ease with the character. A merely adequate portrayal in
The Living Daylights saved somewhat by one of the better stories and scripts, with proper espionage and some hints at Bond's dark side. However, in
Licence to Kill he telephones in his performance and the story, whilst different for a Bond film, was perhaps
too different.
LtK is far too violent as well.
