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I finally saw the new Bond film star­ring the new Bond Daniel Craig last night (my OUT essay was writ­ten sight unseen — wing­ing it entirely by the seat of Craig’s pants).

The new Bond deliv­ered.  Some (swoon­ingly sub­jec­tive) observations:

Bond is now the ‘Bond Girl’ of the open­ing cred­its. It’s his sil­hou­ette we see – and nary a danc­ing naked babe in sight.

Per­haps to com­pen­sate for this, in the actual film he gets his tits out a lot.

He emerges from the sea glis­ten­ing, show­ing off his pumped boobs, like Ursula Andress in ‘Dr No’ — save his nip­ples are more prominent.

Per­haps because of all that time he’s spent in the gym with his circuit-party per­sonal fit­ness trainer he has a nar­cis­sis­tic self-sufficiency and isn’t very inter­ested in shag­ging birds for shagging’s sake. He uses his body like a female spy: as bait. Lur­ing, teas­ing, seduc­ing his female tar­gets and fish­ing for infor­ma­tion just as they’re eagerly slid­ing their tongues down his six pack. Unlike pre­vi­ous Bonds, he doesn’t even have the cour­tesy to shag the girl after he’s extracted the infor­ma­tion about the man he’s after.

For the first time it’s entirely pos­si­ble to imag­ine Bond sleep­ing with a man – espe­cially if it meant he would get some­thing he wanted. Not least because Craig’s Bond is clearly MI6’s rent boy.

Speak­ing of which: The main sex scene in the film, and cer­tainly the most explicit, fea­tures Craig being tor­tured in the buff in a rusty dun­geon (or is it a back room in a gay leather bar?) by the evil Mr Big who pauses to com­pli­ment him on his physique. Craig sits strapped bol­lock naked in a rim chair while his (unseen but vividly imag­ined) blond bol­locks are bashed with a big ugly heavy knot­ted rope. Although in agony, he appears to actu­ally enjoy the expe­ri­ence and eggs his tor­turer on: ‘To the right a bit!’ When the rope thwacks his gonads even harder and repeat­edly he yells: ‘YESSSSSSSSSSS!’. All in all, he comes across as a clas­sic Pushy Con­trol­ling Bottom.

His masochism is of a piece with his nar­cis­sism and his sex-object sta­tus. Accord­ing to Dr Freud, to invite the gaze, as Bond does in this film over and over again, like a tart in the last shop­ping week before Christ­mas, is pas­sive and there­fore masochis­tic. Craig’s Bond may oscil­late between thug­gish sadism and kinky masochism, but our voyeuris­tic, sadis­tic enjoy­ment of his phys­i­cal and ulti­mately emo­tional suf­fer­ing (he falls in love) is a con­stant. We keep bash­ing his bol­locks with a big knot­ted rope, long after he’s told us what we wanted to hear. Or, if our name is Judi Dench, we sim­ply keep pulling his OHMSS string.

The film makes sev­eral other explicit state­ments about Bond’s posi­tion in the new (metro)sexual order of things. In one scene he gives his pretty female side­kick (Ves­per Green) a dress and tells her, over her protests that she has already cho­sen one: ‘I want you to look fab­u­lous’. She gives him a din­ner jacket, over his protests that he has brought his own, say­ing she wants him to look like some­one she would have on her arm. Bond looks pouty but does as he’s told. He’s clearly intrigued by the idea of a woman who might boss him about and dress him up.

His pushy con­trol­ling bot­tom is at the fore­front of her mind when they first meet. ‘I will keep my eye on our Government’s money and off your perfectly-formed arse,’ she promises, uncon­vinc­ingly. ‘You noticed then?’ says Bond, a lit­tle too eagerly.

Yes, she did. So did we, Daniel. But I think you know that.

She, of course, doesn’t quite keep her mind on the job – and we don’t keep our minds on the plot.

Which is just as well. An occa­sion­ally slightly silly film which is also rather over­long (the end­less, unin­tel­li­gi­ble card game almost makes you miss the ‘count­down to Armaged­don’ explo­sive cliche of pre­vi­ous Bond films) is redeemed partly by being as well-made as his Aston Mar­tin, but mostly by the spec­ta­cle of Mr Bond’s perfectly-formed 21st Cen­tury exhibitionism.

Bond has become his own Bond girl and is finally the sex-object of his own movies in the way that the stars of Bond knock-offs have been for years — like Tom Cruise in the Missy Impos­si­ble series. (You can be sure that flat-chested Mr Cruise has turned quite green with envy at the sight of Mr Craig’s bazookas.)

All in all, the best Bond movie in decades and the best Bond — per­haps the only Bond — since Connery.