By Wagstaff
"Reboot” is the word reviewers have been using to describe the latest Bond film, and it’s hard to avoid because that’s what Casino Royale is: a shakeup of the tired Bond formula that still uses much of the same programming. You get the sense of the filmmaker’s dilemma; how do you scrub away what’s built up during 44 years of the 007 franchise and still deliver what people expect? The results are mixed but welcome. This movie is not Moonraker. Casino Royale follows what Ian Fleming actually wrote more closely than any James Bond film since For Your Eyes Only.
The villainous Le Chiffre, a financer of international terrorism, makes money for his clients by betting on the stocks of companies that are about to be hit with terrorism. After 007 thwarts a terror attack in Miami, Le Chiffre needs desperately to recover the money that’s been lost. He owes it to a group of murderous African thugs, and they mean business. He intends to win back the money at a high stakes tournament of Texas Hold’em poker held at Casino Royale in Montenegro. Bond, being the best player in the service, is given the mission of stopping Le Chiffre at the poker table. Helping Bond is MI6’s Vesper Lynd, the beautiful accountant assigned to look after the large sum of Her Majesty's money that’s staking Bond’s hand, and Mathis, the local contact in Montenegro. Mathis is played by Giancarlo Giannini, whose main job it seems is to provide a running commentary on the action for us simpletons in the audience. “There’s 24 million in the pot already” or “If Bond loses this hand…” ect. It’s another in a long line of thankless supporting roles for the once great Giannini.
Eva Green makes a fine Bond girl – Vesper is both stunningly beautiful and smart for a change. Vesper Lynd and James Bond size each other up immediately and accurately when they first meet on a train to Montenegro. It’s one of several non-action scenes that work surprisingly well. The two share moments of tenderness and introspection that are rare in a Bond film. After James dispatches a couple of goons in a bloody, how-hard-it-is-to-kill-a-man fashion reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, Vesper is distraught and disgusted with their grisly work. James finds her fully clothed and weeping in the hotel room’s shower. With uncharacteristic sensitivity, Bond asks if she is cold, turns up the hot water, and joins her as the camera slowly pulls away from the humbled, prostrate couple as if they were Adam and Eve after the Fall. The movie’s last slow-moving act is a character-driven love story, and if you don’t know it by now, you should: any woman that Bond loves deeply is not long for this world.
Mads Mikkelson’s Le Chiffre finally does away with the traditional Bond super villain, a staple of 007 movies since day one. “World domination. Same old scheme, eh Dr. No?” the hero chides the bad doctor in the series' very first entry. Le Chiffre’s scheme is suitably evil but much smaller-scaled (by Bond standards that is; international terrorism is still big stuff). He’s also not the worst villain on the international stage. There are other meaner, more powerful players that can make him sweat; they even put his life in jeopardy and threaten to hack off his girl’s arm with a machete. Le Chiffre still has enough odd quirks that would make him feel at home in an Austin Powers movie, like an asthmatic inhaler and an eye that sheds tears of blood. “It’s nothing sinister," he explains. "Just an abnormality of the tear duct.”
Which brings us to James Bond himself. Daniel Craig gives the most interesting performance as Bond since George Lazenby in On Her Majesties Secret Service, and of course Sean Connery before him. (I’m omitting the 1954 television production of Casino Royale starring Barry Nelson, which I haven’t seen.) Craig is more thuggish than either Pierce Brosnan or Roger Moore. He’s the kind of Bond that will strangle you with his bare hands and then hide your body, bloodying his suit in the process. But while the character's two-fisted animalism is played up, his debonair air is played down. Brosnan and Moore had the latter; Connery had both. One wonders if the filmmaker’s cognizance of Craig’s brutishness prompted them to delay putting Craig in a tux until halfway through the movie. He looks slightly uncomfortable in a monkey suit.
The out for Craig’s lack of suavity is that he’s in the process of becoming the Bond we all know; it’s baby steps for James as he dons his first dinner jacket or sips his first vodka martini. (With this last, he first has to realize that he likes martinis, then a certain kind, and finally he gives the drink a name: a Vesper.) Bond isn’t there yet, though. After one nasty fight scene he runs back to the gambling table and orders his soon-to-be-signature drink, and the bartender asks, “Shaken or stirred, Sir?” “Do I look like a man who gives a damn?” Bond growls. Casino Royale is a movie about identity – about becoming who you really are. As both Vesper and M tell Bond on different occasions, “I knew you would because you are you.”
Casino Royale has more beefcake than cheesecake. Craig’s muscular physique gets the spotlight; he’s buff and cut. Ursula Andress rose like Aphrodite from the sea in an iconic scene from Dr. No 44 years ago; the mirror is Craig rising from the waves today. When Le Chiffre and his henchmen torture 007 by strapping him naked to a bottomless wicker chair that leaves his nether regions exposed to a heavy knotted rope, and Le Chiffre remarks “You have taken very good care of your body, Mr. Bond,” I heard the woman in the seat beside me say, “Mmm hmm, yes you have.”
Overlong action sequences mar Casino Royale. Many of them feel tacked on; I could almost hear the producers over director Martin Campbell’s shoulder telling him that he needed X number of chases or shootouts. The extended opening chase around, through, and on top of a Ugandan construction site wreaks havoc and establishes 007’s superhuman strength and endurance, but it feels like a Jackie Chan movie without Jackie Chan; a truck chase across Miami International’s tarmac owes too much to 
Raiders of the Lost Ark; the climactic scuffle and shootout in a slowly sinking Venetian building only made me wonder about the depth of the water in Venice. The smaller action scenes work better and are more smoothly integrated into the main story, which is equally interested in mythologizing and humanizing the character. This Bond suffers. He gets kicked, beaten, poisoned and tortured and finally has to recover in a hospital. And of course, he falls in love.
In his review of Casino Royale, Sean Burns distinguishes between action scenes that are “ludicrous” and action scenes that are “implausible.” I’m with Burns in preferring the merely implausible, and wishing the filmmakers had nixed the most outlandish set pieces and focused even more on character and on smaller-scaled moments of suspense -- and perhaps even followed their retro preference to its logical but financially unwise end and made a period movie set in the 1950s. Still, this Bond is a step in the right direction, and for the first time since I was a kid, I’m looking forward to the next one.
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Wagstaff is a contributor to The House Next Door, Liverputty and Edward Copeland on Film.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Casino Royale: It's not Moonraker
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12 comments:
I feel like the asthma inhaler is becoming a villain shortcut -- Le Chiffre, the dude in "Rush," I'm sure I'm forgetting others but there's got to be a Gary Oldman villain on the list somewhere.
Liked this Bond a lot; miles better than the last Brosnan. But as you mention, once Bond falls in love, you know the girl's toast, and that sequence felt awfully long as a result.
Nic Cage in Kiss of Death (David Caruso flick) also had the "I'm a meanie with a lung condition" thing going.
Eva Green is a gorgeous young woman but I never bought her as a world-weary woman who would tame the cold-blooded killer that Bond is in this film. Green isn't bad per say as much as she is about ten years too young for the part; she's too apple-cheeked and bright-eyed for Craig to believably fall for her.
Most of their relationship is confined to the film's final act as well, making it feel somewhat tacked on (I don't know how closely this coincides with the book) so even though we know the story popper isn't over it makes the entire sequence feel like the worlds gooiest denouement.
Best since Goldfinger, in my opinion. Actually, I put it right up there with the Connery Bonds.
Far better than I dared hope.
- mercury
Andrew, from what I remember, the love story is the final third of the book and it's one of the world's gooiest denouements as well. And as I consult my facsimile edition of Casino Royale, I see that the last line of the book is: 'Yes, dammit, I said "was". The bitch is dead now.'
The implausibility of Eva Green didn't bother me here because I was probably subconsciously comparing her to the nuclear physicist, Dr. Christmas Jones, that Denise Richards played in The World Is Not Enough.
Saw Nelson as Bond. Didn't even try make a stab at an English accent, and it pretty much looked like standard-issue '50s television--black and white and mostly visually flat, a stage play with a camera recording it.
the new bond is without question better than the last one(s), but it's way too long and has progressing script problems. best example is the whole casino part, which has neither momentum nor suspense.
Daniel Craig is a convincingly elegant dresser in the excellent Layer Cake, so I'm sure his discomfort in a tuxedo is part of the character.
slowly pulls away from the humbled, prostrate couple as if they were Adam and Eve after the Fall.
Damn, you movie criticism writers sure don't hold back. Nice line.
Watching Casino Royale's finale act, I just kept thinking how people were saying Mission Impossible was incomprehensible. Not that it's incomprehesible with this Bond flick, but it's never adequately explained. It's all just assumed. Sort of like how Bond is just assumed to have the ability to get M's real name and password. In this respect, I think the movie making here is quite bold, even if less that satisfying.
Green's character could use some more development to make her connection with Bond better. But she's good enough.
Craig is great.
And the initial action sequence was amazing for a hollywood picture. I think it's properly described as Jackie Chan ish, but for an non HK movie to get that label, is amazing.
I was disappointed to see the lukewarm review of Casino Royale. For me, it was a breath of fresh air; the best Bond flick I've seen.
Craig's bond was more brutal than any of his predecessors. He kills more people with his bare hands than with a gun. He bleeds more than any other I can recall. That gave Casino a visceral feel that made me question whether I was actually watching a Bond flick.
And yes, while we're used to seeing Bond leave a trail of mayhem, this Bond crosses lines verboten to spies - shooting up an embassy and breaking into the personal world of M. However, these events are not simply because Bond could, but because he is following the trail, even if M cannot see it at the time.
Between the shower scene with Eva Green, and the moment on the train when they size each other up, I felt that I learned more about Bond than I had ever known before. This Bond is vulnerable, but not in the uncomfortable way that George Lazenby was.
Green is young, beautiful and smart. Her intelligence is more believable than Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in The World is Not Enough. (During the submarine sinking in that movie, I thought, "There is no way Denise Richards will drown - she has her own floatation devices.")
Another thankful departure is the de-emphasis of gadgets. Bond is a man who relies on his wits and physical prowess, and the long line of technological gimmicks had become annoying (rockets mounted in an Aston Martin, a watch with a grappling hook, and a surfboard with C4 hidden inside). The gadget most crucial to Bond's success in Casino Royale is an ordinary defibrulator.
When it comes to Bond villains, Le Chiffre is not bad. Yes, the tears of blood are cheesy, but at least he hasn't hatched a scheme at world domination. His goal is plain ol' money-laundering and terrorist financing. He's weak when he's outnumbered in his hotel room, yet sadistic in a Guantanamo way when his oppenent is rendered helpless.
As far as the stunts, I felt the African rundown was energetic. Enlisting Sebastien Foucan, who created the free running style, as the object of Bond's chase made the scene that much more dynamic.
There were elements that made Casino Royale feel like a re-introduction to Bond. In the opening sequence, a double-agent taunts Bond about his newly-minted license to kill. M lays out what it means to be a 00-agent. It feels as though no Bond has come before, even though surveillance tapes indicate the action takes place in summer of 2006. It is this cinematic amnesia that led my wife to suggest that James Bond is an alias, much like the Dread Pirate Robinson.
For me, the only thing lacking in this Bond was the opening song. Chris Cornell has his moments, but this tune is not one of them. ("The World is Not Enough" by Garbage tops my list of favorite Bond songs.)
I left the theater disappointed - not in the movie, but in the realization that Bond-makers will have a tough time re-capturing the intensity of Royale.
…how do you scrub away what’s built up during 44 years of the 007 franchise and still deliver what people expect? The results are mixed but welcome.
Wagstaff, your review pretty well pegged it. Even with the mixed results, I came out being pretty excited about the Bond franchise again & would say this is the best effort since the summer of Octopussy and Never Say Never Again. I always felt bad for Timothy Dalton because I thought he would have made a great Bond if the script writers weren’t writing for Roger Moore. Dalton needed less humor and more of the bare-hands strangulation stuff that Craig has in this one. Pierce Brosnan seemed tailor made for the role back in the Remington Steele days when contractual stuff got in the way, but by the time he actually got the role it seemed too late. The last half dozen Bond films had too many formulaic barnacles to make them at all interesting to me.
So, as Dude says, this new film was refreshing. The torture stuff was gritty and well done (though I don’t get Dude’s connection between beating the hell out of Bond’s testicles and urine spritzed Korans) as were most of the fight scenes. And all the ‘starting new’ stuff with Daniel Craig was great. I also agree with Dude that it’s nice that the villain wasn’t into world domination this time. The bleeding eye stuff was hokey but funny.
Considering all the production companies involved (MGM, Columbia & I can’t remember what else…I get confused nowadays just who is making pictures) I guess a leaner Bond story simply isn’t possible – like cutting pork out of the budget. I’d say the film was 20 to 30 minutes too long. The love story should have been woven into the main story a little more so that it didn’t appear to be tacked on. As good as the fight scenes were, I’d still gut some of them out or shorten a few. And I still think there were too many gadgets. Honestly, who has a defibrillator in their car? Instead, they could’ve jerry-rigged a defibrillator from the car battery somehow.
I felt that the forming Bond in this movie was primed to emerge fully formed and elegant as Sean Connery in Dr. No.
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