Tired Bond?

WHEN DID MOVIE HUMANS -- at least action movie humans -- cease to be human? A long time ago, I suspect. I remember when I first became conscious of it -- seeing the ridiculous fight scenes in the remake of the Mummy, and thinking at the time that horror is impossible if your hero can be hurled 25 feet across a room into a stone wall, and bounce up with less ill effect than a Warner Bros. cartoon character would suffer from a similar pratfall.

I recently tried to watch Casino Royale, but was so disappointed by the first action sequence -- climbing jumbo construction cranes without a hint of anxiety over heights, then leaping from one crane to another to a building and then down -- that the human scale is lost. Sean Connery's Bond threw up after smashing a tarantula with a shoe; I think most people would want to throw up or hold on for dear life on a construction crane. But our heroes are no longer human.

My wife didn't mind the action sequence. She objected to the scene in which Bond seduces the villain's mistress, a cliche so predictable (and done with all the set up one normally expects of a porn movie) that the word that came to mind was joyless.

Fleming was never so predictable. The salvation of the series lies in mining the untapped brilliance of its originator.