Daniel Craig: The best Bond

All I’ve heard about for these past months is President Barack Obama vs. former-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, but I’m concerned with a significantly more imperative battle, an unspoken one that is occurring even as you read this.

That battle?

Sir Sean Connery vs. Daniel Craig.

Fifty years after the Bond film franchise began and with the release of the latest entry “Skyfall” in mind, one must consider the age-old question of all good Bond fans: Who is truly the best James Bond?

I think everyone can agree that Connery and Craig are certainly the top contenders.

With that in mind, the conventional side of my conscious has to throw the match to the remarkable Connery.

Since 1962’s “Dr. No,” Connery has permanently stamped his signature swag on the timeless British spy. For six films, Connery played Bond with equal parts sex appeal and dangerous sensibility. To quote a suitable cliché, women wanted to sleep with Connery’s Bond, and men wanted to be him. Though five actors have stepped into Bond’s shoes since Connery’s tenure, many still consider him the best of the Bonds.

I’m taking a huge time jump here — 33 years, to be exact — but overall, Bond was played to very mixed and polarized reactions in the following years.

For my two cents, Roger Moore played Bond too vanilla. Moore’s Bond lacked Bond’s essential sense of uncaring risk. Timothy Dalton lost all sense of self-deprecating humor and played Bond too darkly severe and dramatic. Contrastingly, Pierce Brosnan descended into the very bowels of ridiculous camp with his portrayal. I’m even hesitant to mention George Lazenby, who played Bond for one film in 1969. His performance can be likened to that of an over-glorified stuntman.

Finally in 2006, a savior emerged.

A long four years after the unmentionable “Die Another Day,” Bond officially came roaring back to life after the lackluster Brosnan years.

With just one performance in “Casino Royale,” Craig solidified himself as a Bond not to be reckoned with. Early naysayers who defined the casting of the blond-haired, blue-eyed Craig, in one critic’s words, as “Bland, James Bland” were quickly silenced.

Craig harkened back to Connery’s Bond as a fusion of sex and danger. But he did it differently and, in my opinion, even better. With “Casino Royale” and the casting of Craig, Bond went back to basics. We saw him earn his double-0 status and establish his dangerously trigger-happy persona.

Most significantly, as a first for Bond, we saw him fall in love with the Bond girl to end all Bond girls, the incomparable Vesper Lynd. Through this act, Craig concretely secured his best Bond position. This was a 21st century Bond with all the grit and realism of a post-9/11 spy married with the humanizing notion that he could ultimately fall in love.

At the end of the day, Connery and Craig both fuse that necessary Bond quality of sex appeal and precarious intrigue.

But in today’s hazardous world, my vote’s for gritty and unapologetic Craig.

­— dmcdona@indiana.edu