The name's Bland, not Bond: why Pierce Brosnan is right about his 007

Pierce Brosnan's revelation that he doesn't rate his own performances as Bond, James Bond, ought to be shocking stuff. Here is an actor who throughout his seven-year run as the suave British sleuth was regularly voted the public's second-favourite 007 after Sean Connery. Occasionally, he even came out ahead.

At the time the Brosnan era was considered a hugely successful reinvention of a Bond brand that had suffered in the late 1980s. Timothy Dalton's brace of outings as the secret agent gladly bought into the period's high-octane agenda, but lost something of 007's quintessentially English charm in the process. These films – especially 1989's Licence to Kill – were, to all intents and purposes, violent Hollywood action movies with a bit of Bond tacked on as an afterthought.

They were followed by a six-year gap in which Bond rights holders Eon fought over 007's future on the big screen with Kevin McClory, the co-creator of 1965's Thunderball and the man behind "unofficial" 1983 Sean Connery movie Never Say Never Again. By the time Brosnan picked up the Walther PPK in 1995's GoldenEye, it was make or break for Ian Fleming's ladykilling sleuth.

By the end of his run, the Irish actor had helped reinvigorate the series with audiences. Even Die Another Day was a massive box-office hit in 2002, despite appalling reviews. Brosnan was widely expected to stay on for further films, but Eon instead plumped for the initially unpopular Daniel Craig to take over the role.

What has happened since shows just how much time can colour perceptions. Craig's starker, more human take on the character has brought Bond a newfound cultural relevancy. While the older 007 movies were routinely spoofed in jokey outings such as the Austin Powers series, few have tried to send up 2006's Casino Royale or its successors. The new Bond has even more puff than the rival Bourne series, from which it stole much of its early style. After a bland blip with 2008's middling Quantum of Solace, Craig starred in the best-received Bond movie since the 1960s, and the highest-grossing film of all time in UK cinemas, Skyfall, last year.

But it is not just Craig's portrayal of the secret agent that has cast 1990s Bond into shadow. Rewatching the films now, Brosnan's performance is flat and lackadaisical to the point of blandness. What once appeared to be insouciant cool now comes across as sheer laziness.

Even in GoldenEye, generally considered to be the best of Brosnan's films, his 007 is smug and smarmy in a way Connery and Roger Moore never were. The movie is only saved by a decent storyline, strong direction from Martin Campbell (later to take the reins for Casino Royale) and a decent villain in Sean Bean's multi-layered Alec Trevelyan.

Worse still, in an era where adult themes had re-permeated mainstream Hollywood to the greatest extent since the 1970s, the Brosnan Bond carries little or no physical threat. Even early Roger Moore was steely and cold-blooded enough to threaten Gloria Hendry's double-crossing Rosie Carver with her life in the underrated Live and Let Die. Brosnan 007 is a purring pussycat by comparison.

By the time 2002's Die Another Day had rolled around, with its ridiculous invisible car, video-game style special effects and terrible Madonna cameo, Bond had lost all credibility. Other crimes of the Brosnan era include The World Is Not Enough's Christmas Jones, Denise Richards' crop-topped nuclear physicist, or the not-so terrifying threat in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies: a media baron (played by Jonathan Pryce) who mounts a cunning scheme to provoke world war three using the power of newspapers and GPS. Even Donald Pleasance in You Only Live Twice had a better plan than that.

The sad thing is that Brosnan has proven himself a more than capable actor over the years, turning in a Cary Grant-esque performance as a gentlemanly art thief in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair and a bravura turn as a Blair-like former British PM in Roman Polanski's The Ghost in 2010. As he himself partially admits, maybe he struggled to work out why anyone was still making Bond movies long, long after the initial thrill of the series' 1960s success had dissipated.

Rewatching the films, even Brosnan fans must surely accept that he was never the new Connery, but rather a sort-of strangely flat Roger Moore – without even the charm, screen presence and natural gift for comedy that old raised eyebrow delivered in spades.