I don’t know about you, but my stock in Bond has plummeted ever since Daniel Craig donned the trademark tux in “Casino Royale” and turned the witty debonair spy into a stuck-up sourpuss.

Does this guy ever smile? Does he even speak? No on the first count, and rarely on the second in his latest adventure, “Quantum of Solace.”

It’s the 22nd entry in the nearly 50-year-old franchise, and it’s undoubtedly one of the dullest, despite a preponderance of action scenes stacked up like planes on a runway.

The problem is that you’ve probably seen all these tricks before and seen them performed better, especially in the Jason Bourne flicks, a lively, thrilling franchise that Bond now unceremoniously takes a backseat to in creativity and spark.

This Bond wants to pump you up like Bourne, but merely deflates whenever it begs comparisons to 007’s amnesiac rival, which is often.

It’s as if Bond has been re-Bourne, especially after he sets out to avenge the death of his girlfriend in a quest eerily similar to the one Matt Damon went on after Franka Potente’s character became collateral damage in “Bourne Supremacy.”

No matter. Originality was never part of the plan with this rebooted 007, who no longer sips martinis, smooth talks the ladies or utters the trademark “Bond, James Bond.”

Sadly, the old-fashioned, cerebral 007 has been exchanged for a humorless assassin one chromosome removed from a brainless action star.

He’s not the only one dumbed down, either. So is the script, an incoherent mish-mash by Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (the trio who also wrote the superior “Casino Royale”) that exists merely to connect more than a dozen high-tech action sequences that are generally more blah than wow.

You instantly know you’re in for a trudge when Swiss director Marc Forster (“The Kite Runner”) opens with a cliché mountainside car chase that becomes symbolic of a ride that will be all downhill.

The only thing headed up is the body count, as Bond turns rogue and starts shooting, stabbing and maiming seemingly at will while giving his passport a real workout, hopping from the U.K. to Haiti to Bolivia, where a nefarious plan is hatched to privatize that nation’s water supply.

Along the way, he picks up a couple of Bond girls, one of whom he beds (Gemma Arterton) even though he’s still allegedly grieving the death of his beloved Vesper (the smashing Eva Green, killed off in “Royale”), who took her last breath only days before “Quantum of Solace” begins.

Ironically, it’s the girl Bond doesn’t have sex with, Olga Kurylenko as the enigmatic Camille, who packs most of the heat. Her loyalties shift like the wind, making her every bit Bond’s equal when it comes to romantic free agency. Surely, sparks will fly.

Well, I’m still waiting. But I’m not blaming Kurylenko as much as I do Craig, who possesses neither the charm nor the charisma of 007s like Connery and Brosnan.

He’s flat, dull and overmatched, especially in his handful of scenes opposite the great Judi Dench, reprising her long-running role as M, the taciturn head of MI6.

I swear she’s tougher than him, a perception enhanced when she emasculates him metaphorically by calling for his gun and credit cards when she suspects her boy’s latest mission might be becoming too personal.

That she even comprehends what that mission is puts her several steps ahead of all those audience members helplessly attempting to follow what the heck is going on.

Turns out to be nothing, really, just like the movie, which misfires on nearly every level, largely because Forster, a director who excels at intimate dramas like “Monster’s Ball” and “Finding Neverland,” just isn’t a man of action.

If the producers really wanted 007 to be more like Bourne, they should have pilfered that franchise’s resident director, Paul Greengrass, who consistently demonstrates a gift for melding story and action.

Forster has no such gift but does lend the film an appealing aesthetic that raises “Quantum’s” value above junk Bond status. But it’s hardly enough to warrant an investment in a franchise so clearly steeped in recession.

The Patriot Ledger