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Written by MICHAEL JAMES ALLEN
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Tuesday, 21 November 2006 |
Let’s face it, in recent years James Bond has become a bit of a joke. The last time I saw him he was tooling around in a hovercraft with a nuclear scientist named Christmas Jones. That was 1999’s “The World Is Not Enough.” I couldn’t even muster up the courage to see him in his last opus, 2002’s “Die Another Day,” but from what I hear it was more of the same: Action sequences that looked like extended car commercials and a never-ending parade of sex puns. Look, I know that he’s always been a little campy, but it’s a sad when I start viewing Austin Powers as a more serious spy than James Bond.
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"Casino Royale"
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 Entertainment
Art
Directed by Martin Campbell
Written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis
Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, and Judi Dench
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action, a scene of torture, sexual content, and nudity
Released November 17, 2006
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I was very pleased, then, to discover that “Casino Royale,” the new rebooting of the franchise, has exorcised most of the silliness that plagued the other recent films. Gone are the endless quips, the wacky gadgets, and the hokey plots. All the useless fat has been trimmed and what’s left are the things that made Bond films so appealing in the first place: Great action, beautiful women, and a spy that truly knows how to kick ass.
I’m going to treat the plot summary just as a Bond movie would—as an afterthought—but I will say that, this time round, it is halfway believable. The doomsday devices have been replaced by a climactic poker game at the titular casino, and the power-hungry mad scientists have been replaced by Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelson), a terrorist. Armed with a genius I.Q. and a creepy eye that occasionally cries blood, Le Chiffre is the type of Bond villain we should see more often—eccentric, but still scary—and Mikkelson endows the character with enough humanity to actually take him seriously.
The same can also be said of Daniel Craig, who is by far the best James Bond since Sean Connery. While other incarnations of the character have made him nearly indestructible, a sort of tuxedo-clad superhero, Craig plays him with insecurity and vulnerability. While this may seem like a bizarre acting choice for playing a superspy, it actually allows us to finally care about James Bond as a person and, in turn, makes the daring things he does all the more dramatic.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is not God’s gift to movies or anything. The film is weakened with hokey lines, a dreadful opening song from Audioslave’s Chris Cornell, and a fairly incomprehensible ending. As a movie, “Casino Royale” is merely average. As a Bond movie, however, it has enough strong acting and fresh ideas to mark it as something of a revitalization. I don’t know how much I’ll be revisiting the film when it’s released on DVD (or when it inevitably gets played twenty times a day on the USA Network), but it does make me excited to see Bond’s next adventure. And, considering the dreck that has come before it, I view that as something of a miracle.
Finally! We can start taking James Bond seriously again! |
The Reviewer
Written by Guest on 2006-12-26 16:07:31
This guy must hate movies. I think he plays with Legos and pleasures himself to weird pornography. James Bond Rulez!!! OMG OMG  |
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