Casino Royale (2006)

December 19, 2006

Written by: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench,
Giancarlo Giannini, Sebastian Foucan

I have to admit that I loved this new vision of 007– the character and the film franchise– from the odd opening graphics and the (apparently) much-maligned Chris Cornell theme to the long-awaited final words.

Campbell’s direction throws no punches. Opening with a gritty, grainy black and white sequence where a relatively inexperienced Bond has to make his second kill in order to earn his “Double O” status, we are immediately treated to Bond as not just a real human being, but one who is disconcertingly real and paradoxical. When asked about how his first target died he remarks drily “not well,” but the flashback scenes to the brutal, hand-to-hand struggle illustrate just how serious he is.

Daniel Craig is an entirely convincing Bond, his performance bringing to life an intricate interplay between the agent who is still learning how the world works and the mythical character we have come to expect.

Craig is all lean, wiry muscle, but not unbelievably built, and he is handsome, but in a way viewers can believe existing in the real world without make-up artists and artful Hollywood lights. We learn how hew acquires his first foreign sports car (an Aston-Martin of course), but it isn’t for the love of driving. We see his first manipulative seduction, but it not only ends abruptly and anti-climactically (har-har) but serves also to reveal– at least partially– why Bond becomes the detached womanizer of later episodes. This Bond’s signature drink is created as part of an ironic performance for the local crowd, while to the classic question of whether his martini should be shaken or stirred, a shaken Bond barks “do I look like I give a damn?”

There are fewer gadgets and more physicality in this Bond’s repertoire. From the early chase sequence with Sebastian Foucan– who puts on an amazing display of parkour– to more chases in America and Venice, the young Bond is already an inveterate, intense globe-trotter. But when he finds his man, he most often ends up engaged in personal, close combat of a kind you can’t imagine any other Bond being a part of.

So, too, Eva Green’s tart, intelligent Vespa is the logically perfect Bond heroine for this film, but perhaps no other. She is easily Bond’s match at verbal repartee but even more comfortable around money and fashion: after Bond chooses a seductive dress for her to wear instead of her selected, conservative attire, she chooses a jacket for him that is so completely fitted to Bond the physical agent and Bond the filmic ideal that even he has to stop and look at himself in the mirror for a long moment. We can practically see him evolving.

Vespa is, of course, not immune to Bond’s charms. But more importantly, he is not immune to hers. His earlier dalliance taught him an important lesson about women, but there is still much for him to learn about the demands of being a a Double O agent. Bond believes the bad guy taken care of and that he has been given a chance to live like a normal human being. He has faced the ultimate challenge to his manhood (literally and figuratively, undergoing humiliating torture that both recalls the infamous crotch-directed laser of Goldfinger and takes advantage of that campy allusion to reveal more of this Bond’s humanity) and we are provided with a happily overwrought interlude to wait for our hero, facing perhaps the last psychological tipping point he will ever be open and vulnerable enough to face, to come to his senses.

When he does, not only does his character evolve further, but the movie itself does so as well and we are given a wholly over-the-top sequence in Venice of the kind we expect in a Bond movie. If these scenes of demolition, watery entrapment, and unbelievable luck offend viewer’s sensibilities then I have to wonder why they would ever go to a James Bond flick in the first place!

I have little to say about the plot. This is a James Bond movie. Suffice it to say that it’s at once overly complicated but dreadfully simple and involves a bad guy, a lot of money, more bad guys who are both allied and in conflict with the main bad guy, and a lengthy poker game where Bond must fight off all these bad guys, protect Vespa, and try to win all their money.

I can imagine criticism that _Casino Royale_ is overly long particularly the poker game (which has replaced the book’s Baccarat game– does anyone in the world even remember how Baccarat is played?) but really– have those critics ever SEEN a Bond film before? Bond is meant to be a little long, a little over the top… even a little too much. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be Bond, it would be Ethan whatshisname, the pale Bond shadow of MI:3.

I have only two complaints about the movie. First, there’s no Money Penny. A good half of my Bond shtick comes from imitating Sean Connery saying things like “Well, hello there Money Penny.” Second, I just don’t see how any succeeding film can live up to the standards set by this one. What makes this Bond great is not just that he is different– more human, immediate, and physical– but the sense of exhilaration we experience watching his evolution from agent to Agent, from “James Bond” to “Bond, James Bond.” As much as I like Daniel Craig (and I feel a warm sense of connection, even intellectual ownership, given that I was singing his praises after seeing his peformance in Enduring Love, well before any thoughts of Bond were in the air), without that component I am skeptical that further installments can possibly be as great as this one.

Tags: cinema, film, review, Screening Log