Casino Royale

Posted by Greg

February 28, 2008

Audience - Shaken and Stirred

**** out of *****

My favorite Bond line ever was in 1964’s Goldfinger, when Bond was interrupted during a massage by a contact. He stopped his masseuse, smacked her on the ass and said “Give us a minute, darling. Man talk.” The words ‘cheesily sexist’ don’t even begin to do it justice, but it was also a testament to just why Connery made the role his own. Even with misogynist, dated lines like this, he could still make you believe he was a cold-blooded assassin. The new Bond movie takes this and runs with it, pulling back on the charming rogue routine and cranking up the brutal killer angle to eleven. But is that enough to resurrect the wilting franchise? While it misses a few marks, the answer is pretty solid yes - Bond is back and in top form for the 21^st century.

The film takes us back a bit, with a nicely done black-and-white sequence that shows us a rookie Bond (Daniel Craig) before he was a ‘Double-0′. To attain that rank, he needs two kills, which we see him doing with barely a raised eyebrow. Once he’s got his famed zero-moniker under his belt, his brash arrogance on the next assignment sinks the mission and gets him photographed executing an unarmed suspect, which is splashed across the daily newspapers. As you may suspect, his boss, M (Judi Dench), is not amused.

But as we all know, Bond never gives up, and instead of a vacation, he follows a lead to the Bahamas, where he sniffs out slimy terrorist banker Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). Turns out that Le Chiffre has been playing fast and loose with his clients’ cash, and needs a quick injection of bling if he wants to maintain his reputation (and life). This, of course, means a high-stakes game of poker, to which Bond is summarily dispatched to win, therefore preventing a huge pile of cash making its way into the hands of international terrorists.

The thing about Bond films is that, no matter how entertaining they were, after 44 years, there wasn’t much that Bond hadn’t done; the standard plot has become as static as that of a Friday the 13^th film. What the team behind Casino Royale set out to do was make our hero a more believable person, flaws and all, as well as update him by downgrading him. Previous Bonds have all been like gentleman spies with a gun and a license to kill. This new Bond is more like a brawling street punk thrown into a tux who killed people anyway. The license was just gravy.

Craig caught a boatload of unfair flack when he was cast (does it really matter what colour his hair is?), but the detractors are now eating their words. Not since Connery has Bond had such a savage sneer and killed with such conviction. He does an excellent job of letting us see Bond before he had a barrier of steel around his heart, letting his emotions for Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) affect - and sometimes derail - his mission. His Bond is an incredibly athletic ass-kicker, willing to take ridiculous chances to win the fight, and often getting himself beaten up nearly as badly as his marks. The fight scenes are noticeably raw and much more realistic than in previous films. But our favorite agent is also a quick thinker; the only thing moving faster than his fists is his brain.

Director Martin Campbell (who also directed Brosnan’s Goldeneye) handles things with a steady hand. His action scenes are well-covered and easy to follow, and he stages some large-scale set pieces that are amazing to watch. The standout comes (surprisingly) at the beginning of the film, with Bond chasing a suspect in a lengthy and amazingly kinetic chase scene that relies heavily on the French urban acrobatic discipline knows as parkour (the man he’s chasing is Sebastien Foucan, who helped popularise the style). Even the poker scenes are exciting to watch, and I hate poker.

The other performers round out the film very nicely. Judi Dench plays M yet again with class; a carbon-hard exterior that hides a soft spot for Bond and his reckless antics. The very sexy Eva Green is a formidable partner for Bond, and gives her character equal amounts of iciness and vulnerability, and Jeffrey Wright is good in a small part as perennial Bond contact Felix Leiter. But does the bad guy measure up? Megalomaniacs with access to super weapons and intricate plots for world domination are passé now, so it’s refreshing to see a more realistic bad guy; one who moves money to badder-guys. Danish superstar Mikkelsen is great as Le Chiffre, oozing serpentine charisma (and tears of blood) as he grows increasingly desperate to one-up Bond as the stakes grow higher.

Where the movie falls short is in its third act, when things start to drag a bit. At 2hrs and 14 minutes, it does go on a bit long. I also have to say that I did miss the gadgets; after all, without the name ‘Bond’ and a few returning characters, what makes this any different than the Bourne or Mission: Impossible series of spy movies? Also noticeably lacking is Moneypenny and Q, who I would like to have seen.

But those are small quibbles. It’s hard to both reinvent a franchise and still provide the things that the predecessors are known for, which Casino Royale does with style. It’s a fresh approach; a meaner Bond for a meaner time, and entertaining from start to end.

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