Daniel Craig, Eva Green,
Judi Dench, Mads Mikkelsen
Directed by Martin Campbell
Rated PG-13
4 Pulses
The action is raw, the women are gorgeous, the backdrops are breathtaking, the villains are the epitome of evil, and the story is predictably Bond (meaning if you pay too much attention, the little plot holes will annoy you).
But forget all that. The real reason Casino Royale pulls us in is so we can size up the new Bond?Daniel Craig.
The Bond franchise makes it impossible for new incarnations of Ian Fleming’s character to please every fan. Roger Moore aficionados will say Craig is a blue-eyed brute, butchering the performance Moore gave such an elegant, tongue-in-cheek touch. Fans of Sean Connery may be pleased, Craig’s brusque performance harkens ghosts of the earliest official Bond. Fans of the latest Bond, Pierce Brosnan who made Bond as smooth as silk and twice as cool, will groan to watch Bond bleeding in earnest, making freshman errors and even being mistaken as a valet.
George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton made their fame elsewhere, thus exempt from this comparison; however, even they fit the dark-haired heritage of Fleming’s Bond, where our new, muscular Bond is quite blonde.
Casino Royale is an adaptation of Fleming’s first Bond novel, and the first official Bond film to take us back to the beginning. It’s a very trendy sort of thing to do these days, in line with Batman Begins and the Star Wars prologue series.
So Craig’s mission was rather complicated?be Bond, show us his 007 evolution and be a doll and try not to mess up the 44-year legacy.
Casino Royale gives us something we haven’t had from Bond?humanity, emotion
and explanation. It’s a bit refreshing, and a little confusing. The film is set in a post-Sept. 11 world, as if the other Bond films never existed, yet it explains the Bond we’ve known all these years.
A few missing Bond-isms include the lovely Miss Moneypenny and the gadget wizardry of Q. True blue Bondisms include exceptionally beautiful women (Eva Green is superb as lead Bond girl, also Vesper Lynd and Caterina Murino), plenty of blind double crossing and Dench’s fabulous M. New Bondisms: a Bond we’d rather watch act than kick ass, modern yet not extraordinary technology, and a side of our hero we can relate to.
If you’ve been a Bond fan, it’s worth seeing. If not, it’s a good place to start. If you like the novels it may finally be time to try the movies.
