Judging James Bond

Remarkably, James Bond is back in the movie theaters and headlines. "Casino Royale," with the new "blonde Bond," Daniel Craig, opened over the weekend with a $40 million US box office.

The new Bond may look like Vladimir Putin on steroids, but he pulls off the greatest Bond trick of all — keeping Ian Fleming's 1950's Cold War super-spy hip, relevant and alluring for audiences right now.

Most film heroes go the way of Davy Crockett, Sherlock Holmes, Shaft and Rambo. Not Bond — James Bond.

This hour on Point: He's brutal and he's back, again. We'll look at the many faces and morphing masculinity of James Bond.

Guests:

Chris Kaltenbach, Movie Critic for the Baltimore Sun;
Toby Miller, Director of the Program in Film and Visual Culture and professor of sociology and English at the University of California, Riverside;
Maryam D'Abo. She starred as Kara Milovy in the 1987 movie "The Living Daylights" opposite Timothy Dalton. She is the author of the book "Bond Girls Are Forever."