The signature introduction that Bond fans love only appears at the end of this film. As does the signature theme music. Hearing both was a huge relief for me, and holds out hope for the Bond franchise surviving into the next decade. I sat through the movie increasingly worried that I would hear neither. Those two pieces of movie lore never fail to bring a smile to my face, and are part of the charm of Bond movies.
Casino Royale lacks the charm, but makes up for it in intensity. Daniel Craig is genuinely menacing, he has the cruellest looking mouth I’ve seen on any male actor other than the young Jack Nicholson, and that is saying something. He also pulls off a performance that Pierce Brosnan would’ve found hard to match, but then those storylines had a dfferent vision.The terror on Craig’s face as he realizes he is being poisoned and scrambles desperately to save himself is the work of a serious actor. The performance matches the overall mood of the film, which is chilly.
The action is all there, but never goes over the top. And there are few of those repartees that Pierce Brosnan would deliver with such panache. So listen carefully , and watch out for the one about Moneypenny! The babes are there, but where will they find another Hail (he he )Berry? Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), the accountant helping Bond against the villain, Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), gets more emotionally involved than most Bond heroines. And vice versa. There’s actually a rather long sequence where the pair go all lovey-dovey.
This kind of writing is where the ’new’ Bond is in danger of crashing in the eyes of viewers and fans. Simply because we know James Bond lacks the intellectual depth and self-doubt that characterizes a spy like George Smiley, who John Le Carre created, or even Jason Bourne, Robert Ludlum’s creation. Perhaps it’s because more people have seen a Bond movie than read an Ian Fleming novel. It’s Bond’s toffness, for example, that makes Mike Myers’ Austin Powers so funny.
The usual Bond gadgets are at a premium in this movie as well. What happened? Have we already invented everything that the Bond movies would showcase? Some might say that’s probably because Q wasn’t in Casino Royale, the novel. However, given that the movie is based in our time rather than the last century in which the book was based, this is puzzling.
What about the villain? Frankly, I left the movie confused about this. Le Chiffre banker to the world’s terrorists is not really a master criminal. He is as much a pawn in the whole game as prime mover. He was genuinely scary only once in the movie, when he takes the whip to a Bond in the buff, which also brings out the best repartee in the movie. This is the kind of nod to the ’old’ Bond that gets the biggest cheers from the audience.
Bond in the buff is, by the way, being promoted as a bait for the women in the audience. Well, ladies, you won’t be disappointed. This is the kind of physique that men think that women drool over. Over to you, ladies, to clarify that.
Can this movie be a turning point for the franchise, an opportunity to reinvent the world’s most famous spy? Strange then that the producers should have chosen to go back to the first in the series to do this. I cannot think of any reason beyond the fact that EON, which produced most of the movies in the series, apparently didn’t produce the original film version of this, supposedly true-to-Fleming’s-vision story.
I would like to think of this movie as a prequel (Yikes!!). I hope we won’t see the rest of the movies being remade in the new metaphor.That would be a lot of money down the drain, and the Broccolis (he he he--the irony of a Bond producer sharing a name with a much-maligned vegetable) are not known for letting money go down the drain. The franchise desperately needs new storylines and I am tempted to write one myself. Who shall I cast as Bond? Let’s see...
By the way, it would be interesting to see how the Bourne franchise develops in comparison to Bond. I am certainly licking my lips in anticipation. I know Ludlum only wrote three Bourne novels, but hey there are talented writers out there.
Trivia: In the airport sequence, a famous tycoon appears fleetingly as a passenger. Who? Let’s see how many readers and viewers get the answer to that. Watch the sequence closely!