Queer review: Daniel Craig's drastic mission to kill off his Bond image will leave you shaken, writes LARUSHKA IVAN-ZADEH

Queer (18, 136 mins) 

Verdict: Do say never again 

Rating:

Shaken Bond fans may require a large Martini to brave Queer. 

Daniel Craig is clearly on a drastic mission to kill off his 007 image as he takes on the role of a needy, alcoholic, heroin-addicted, predatory gay man who cruises bars for young men, then engages them in eye-poppingly graphic sex. 

Let's say, it's not one to watch with the family on Christmas Day.

Slavishly based on the Beat-era novella by William S. Burroughs — though minus its most revolting parts — Queer is a squalid tale of fear and self-loathing in 1950s Mexico City (even though it's quite obviously shot on a studio lot in Italy).

Here, American ex-pat Lee (Craig) becomes obsessed with an emotionally distant young ex-US Navy serviceman (a pretty, yet blank, Drew Starkey).

 Is the lad queer? Lee can't tell, but he's determined to find out. Thereon in, the two men alternately get drunk and have sex, or get drunk and don't have sex, ad nauseam.

Jason Schwartzman provides welcome warmth and comic relief as a jovial, fat-suited (I thought that wasn't allowed any more?) homosexual who gets robbed repeatedly by the strangers he has sex with. 

However, the whole, plotless enterprise is going nowhere fast, until a bizarre third act, where the duo take a freaky trip to the South American jungle, prompted by Lee's interest in telepathy, encounter a gun-toting Lesley Manville, wrestle with a venomous snake and crawl inside each other's skin.

To be fair, Craig has some magnificent moments.

 A highlight is an awards-worthy scene where Lee shoots up heroin and stares, painfully and poignantly, into the camera.

 And Burroughs would be wildly flattered to see his alter-ego embodied by such a beefcake. Craig's physique speaks more of a man built on kale smoothies and bench-pressing than cigarettes, hard drugs and tequila.

Director Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me By Your Name) is a master at exploring powerplay and desire. 

But I struggle to see what he's getting at here, beyond the fact that Lee is a man who yearns for intimacy and is tragically incapable of it. 

And yet, despite Craig's committed performance, you fail to feel Lee's agony.

Guadagnino is a daring auteur and there are a few flashes of true beauty in this sweaty, soulless misfire. 

However, as a means of Craig putting Bond to bed and re-establishing himself as a serious actor, it's mission accomplished.

From Roger Moore With Love (12A, 79 mins 

Verdict: Licence to thrill 

Rating:

If It's a Bond fix you're after, my recommendation is From Roger Moore With Love.

 This celebratory portrait entertainingly reflects its subject: self-deprecating and irresistibly charming, if a touch one-dimensional. I loved it.

Narrated with one eyebrow cocked, it explains how The Saint star first created his iconic debonair persona; then played it to perfection, on and off the screen, for his entire life.

'He just had 'it',' declares ex-Bond girl Jane Seymour, one of several 'dear friends' interviewed, including Joan Collins and Pierce Brosnan. 

No one has a bad word to say about the man and, unlike Mr Craig, Moore happily played 007 until the age when his latest Bond girl told him he reminded her of her dad. 

A lover of fast cars, luxury homes and gorgeous women, he died with no regrets in life and enjoyed every golden moment. How refreshing.

Kraven The Hunter (15, 127 mins) 

Verdict: Supervillain turkey 

Rating:

On track to be the latest flop in Sony's Spider-Man Universe franchise, after Madame Web and Morbius, Kraven The Hunter is the origin story of comic book villain Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who starts life as Sergei, nice eldest son of a nasty Russian drug lord (Russell Crowe with dodgeski accent). 

Dad instructs his boys: 'We are predators. They are prey.'

When Sergei is mauled by a lion on safari, a series of unlikely events bestow ill-defined super-powers upon him and he sets out to hunt down bad guys who kill big game animals, or something. It's hard to tell you more, as the plot has more holes than a moth-eaten rug.

There's an enemy called 'The Rhino' (Alessandro Nivola), an assassin, 'The Foreigner' (Christopher Abbott), and a token strong female character, Calypso (Ariana DeBose), who is a tarot-card reading 'investigative lawyer' with a mysterious secret. 

She can keep it.

The CGI is ropey and the script so dire it provoked giggles at my press screening. Don't hold your breath for Kraven 2. 

Also showing...

Return to Middle Earth via Japan with Kenji Kamayama’s epic anime cartoon The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim (12A, 134 mins, four stars)

It’s set 183 years before events in Peter Jackson’s original movie trilogy based on Tolkien’s work and tells the surprisingly involving tale of Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Brian Cox), forced to defend his kingdom of Rohan against the warring Dunlendings (also human — there are no elves, dwarves or hobbits here) with the help of his headstrong daughter, Hera (Gaia Wise, daughter of Emma Thompson and Greg Wise).

Unnamed in Tolkien’s original footnote, which inspired this screenplay, Hera admirably redresses the historically male-dominated Rings universe, alongside her kick-ass, middle-aged shieldmaiden (Miranda Otto).

The traditional 2D animation is a bit jerky, but the painterly backgrounds are beautiful. It may not possess the original trilogy’s magical power, but the action is terrific and the story galloped along so grippingly I didn’t dare go to the loo.

Carry-On (15, 119 mins, three stars) may bring Sid James et al to mind, but is in fact a satisfying Netflix thriller set around carry-on luggage. On Christmas Eve at Los Angeles airport, security agent Ethan (Taron Egerton, trying a bit too hard) is trapped into a deadly, if increasingly implausible, game of cat-and-mouse with a bad guy (an effortless Jason Bateman) who’s determined to get a cabin bag full of Novichok onto a crowded flight.

As director of 2014’s Non-Stop, Jaume Collet-Serra already knows his way round a peril-on-a-plane thriller. His disposable Die Hard pretender may have preposterous plot points but packs in sufficient ‘Push the button or they all DIE!!’ tension.

Carry-On is streaming on Netflix, all other films are in cinemas now.