What it does have is The Man With the Golden Hair, Daniel Craig. And the latest crash diet involves no more silly gadgets, no lame innuendo, no dreadful puns, no bikini-clad ‘equals’ and no Q. But even that James got flabby (it was the invisible car that did it). The best example? Perhaps the tentative 007 of Licence To Kill leading to the arch, self-aware smarts of GoldenEye (“Sexist, misogynist dinosaur” etc). Bond actually goes ‘back to basics’ remarkably frequently: the lunatic excesses of You Only Live Twice precede the emotionally wrought On Her Majesty’s Secret Service the space operatics of Moonraker make way for the smarter, darker For Your Eyes Only the geriatric antics of A View To A Kill provoke the keener edge of the underrated Dalton debut The Living Daylights. Then, on the brink of parody, comes the purge: the extravasate, the rethink. First, the constant appetite to top the last film bloats the franchise with ever-bigger but not better adventures. The world’s most bulimic agent has an established routine. Let’s not forget that Casino Royale’s (relatively and – in the torture scene – literally) stripped down approach is actually part of Bond’s regular binge-and-purge cycle.
