Casino Royale

Movies about James Bond sell well on DVD, they do well at the box office and the character has become one of the most iconic and recognizable in the history of cinema. So it's surprising that the vast majority of them are horrible, bordering on unwatchable. These films are not bad in a mild, mediocre kind of way. Moonraker is many things, but it's not mediocre. More like dreadful.

Even Sean Connery, the most famous and beloved of all Bonds, has a few duds on his 007 filmography. (Diamonds are Forever? Never Say Never Again?) Certainly, some of this has to do with the difficulty of adapting Ian Fleming's gritty, unkind novels, with their cumbersome plotlines, overlapping webs of intrigue and hard-nosed cruelty. But it's not just the source material that's held these films back for so long. There's something of an addict's desperation to the post-Connery Bonds (really, post-Thunderball Bonds), always chasing that carefree, unstudied Goldfinger high.

It's impossible to top Dr. No and Goldfinger at their own game. They are pop culture moments unto themselves, unrepeatable. Back then, the series wasn't about fulfilling everyone's expectations about how James Bond should behave and what kind of things he should do. He was a largely unknown property (at least, to cinema fans and the less well-read). For the last time ever, the audience was discovering Bond's impeccable tastes, his odd little quirks and his swift bursts of casual violence, not waiting for them to once more make a gratuitous appearance.

From that moment on, every actor portraying the character has nipped at Connery's heels. You sense they're hoping, through strength of will, to out-Connery Connery. But of course, that's a fools errand, particularly if you happen to be a lumbering oaf by the name of Roger Moore.

Moore's not even the worst bond. George Lazenby, who portrayed the secret agent in only one nearly-unwatchable film - On Her Majesty's Secret Service - would be my pick, although Timothy Dalton likewise failed to fill out the tuxedo. Talk about studied. His quips went over about as well as Michael Richards hosting the NAACP Image Awards. (Too soon?)

I'd say Brosnan comes the closest to the old school Connery vibe (though he wound up featuring in some of the series' lamest entries), but that's the whole point I'm trying to make right there. The later films always try to come close to the old school Connery vibe. Why?

Honestly, this hadn't even occured to me before. I think I, like most people, always think of James Bond in terms of Goldfinger. So when I hear they are casting a new James Bond, I think they should go for the guy who could be the most like Sean Connery. And when they are making a new Bond film, I always think they should go back in time and set it during the Cold War, back when a British Secret Agent doing cool spy shit had a worthwhile, equally iconic enemy to fight against. (Evil though terrorists may be, they're not Reds.)

Martin Campbell (who directed Brosnan's debut, the better-than-average Goldeneye) dared to pose this question. He has refashioned James Bond into a totally different character, one who mirrors the Connery version without ever really resembling him. The signposts of Bondness are all here, and in fact the film takes great delight in showing us the origin of many of the spy's favorite catch phrases and ephemera. But Daniel Craig, Campbell and a trio of screenwriters (Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis) never once fall back on tradition when they can try something new.

For the first time in decades, a James Bond film is the year's most fresh, daring, original and entertaining action movie. In a year full of big disappointments and let-downs, finally here's a pleasant surprise.



I usually hate being wrong, but this is one occasion where I don't mind it so much. I saw the mookish Daniel Craig, the same guy who directed the last middling "reinvention" of James Bond and Paul Haggis, creator of my Least Favorite Film of 2005, working together on the project and merely assumed all was lost. (Plus, years of grinding Brosnan refuse and Clive Owen absolutely refusing to take part in the franchise in any way had caused the prospect of new Bonds to lose some of their luster.) So I had essentially written this movie off. Then I started reading overwhelmingly positive reviews from English critics. Then English bloggers and audiences. Then American critics. Then people I knew. And they were all right.

Restarting the franchise in the present day (and with Judi Dench continuing on as M from the previous films) seems like it won't make any sense, but it's never really an issue in the film. The opening scene, generally showing Bond on some sort of outrageous, death-defying assignment, instead shows him making his first two kills, the mandatory pre-requisite for obtaining MI:6's elite double-0 status.

These are not typical James Bond murders, which tend to be sleek and neat and followed by some sort of devilishly clever quip. Craig bashes a guy's face in with a urinal in grimy black and white, then shoots a different unarmed man at point blank range. This is just the first upheaval of the Bond formula, which has long since been due for some refurbishing.

In lieu of an extensive "assignment" sequence which would normally find James being briefed by M and armed by Q (who doesn't appear at all), Campbell rejoins Bond already on his first assignment as a double-0, tailing a bombmaker in Madagascar. The film's first and best action sequence comes immediately, when Bond's cover is mysteriously blown and his target takes off on foot through a construction site.

This scene is, quite simply, brilliant. Bond and his quarry bounce around girders and through half-completed walls, improvising weapons and barely evading death at least a dozen times each. It's easy to forget, watching bloated, flat, hyperactive Brett Ratner set pieces designed wholly inside a computer, how much fun simple things like creative stuntwork and shootouts can be. The only problem with this sequence is that it's so great, and ends on such a perfect moment of half-mad defiance, there's pretty much no way for the rest of the movie to top it.

Campbell tries anyway. The trail left by the bombmaker leads to the scarred Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), a banker for terrorists who invests blood money in the stock market. Having lost the bulk of his client's money in unwise investments, Le Chiffre has no choice but to win it back by holding an elite $150 million Texas Hold 'Em Style poker game at the Casino Royale in Monte Carlo. And to make sure he doesn't win the money, and has to turn himself in to MI:6, M sends Bond to beat him in the game.

It's simple and straight-forward, a welcome relief from the cartoonish supervillainy of most Bond films. The film contains a lot of incident, but doesn't require too much exposition. The pieces are set in motion and then the drama becomes largely about shifts in loyalty or buried agendas. The filmmakers actually bothered to include interpersonal conflict between characters this time around, rather than the cardboard artifice of, say, Tomorrow Never Dies.

Obviously, this allows Campbell to make use of his terrific ensemble cast. For the first time, Judi Dench actually has a reason to appear in the film aside from the sizable paycheck. M has things to do and a personality in Casino Royale, growing irritated with this overzealous, self-centered new agent even as she admires his chutzpah. Jeffrey Wright turns in yet another in an ongoing string of memorable supporting performances as another player in Le Chiffre's tournament. And Eva Green, playing an MI:6 accountant watching over Bond's initial $10 million stake, ranks among the all-time great Bond girls, right up there with Pussy Galore.

Usually, Bond movies will pretend that their featured women are intelligent. (Denise Richards was, after all, playing a nuclear scientist.) But they're really just arm candy. They often have nothing to do with the actual storyline, so sometimes the movies have them stand around or get kidnapped often. And Green's Vesper Lynd does, indeed, get kidnapped during the movie. But, hey, so does James Bond. He even bleeds and gets tortured. It's just that kind of realistic environment with actual stakes.



But Lynd is actually intelligent. You can tell because she says things that aren't totally vapid and dumb. She and Craig exhibit actual chemistry during some of their scenes together, particularly in their first flirtatious meeting on a train. This may be one of the best-written scenes in Bond history, reminding me at times of the mysterious train banter in The Manchurian Candidate. Vesper and James are showing off their remarkable intuitive abilities, Sherlock Holmesing personal information about one another based solely on mannerisms and appearance.
It's a trick James will likewise put to use during the actual poker game. I wasn't a big fan of the idea of replacing baccarat with poker in this entry, but once again, I was proved wrong by Casino Royale. The poker perfectly reflects the central concept of the movie. In cards, a player must hide his or her tells at all cost, must never reveal the truth about his or her hand to anyone. To reveal any hint of information at all gives your opponent an unbeatable advantage.

Similarly, a double-0 agent can't trust anyone, ever, for any reason. Bond, in other words, does not become a cold, uncaring womanizer who uses people because that's his essential nature. He had no choice but to develop this way. It's the nature of who he is and who he must be. Yeah, it's not exactly the most thrilling, original concept in the world, but this is a James Bond movie. The fact that there's subtext at all besides "watches are cool!" is fucking amazing.

Campbell and his screenwriters have put some geniune thought into who James Bond is and why he does what he does, and it shows in the script. Rather than just assuring us he's a badass by giving him a martini and putting him into GQ poses, Campbell attempts to show us the traits that make James Bond such an unstoppable force for good. I mentioned his intuitive abilites. There's, of course, his complete physical dominance of all adversaries. Then there's his remarkably adaptive nature. (During action scenes, Campbell will frequently shift to Bond's perspective, scanning his environment, MacGyver style, for something he can grab and use against his foe). But most importantly, there's Bond's resilience.

Time and again, Casino Royale pivots on Bond's ability to pick himself up and keep fighting. He can take a harsh beating standing up and then go back to running at full speed. When he's being sadistically tortured, he'll wince for a moment before laughing off the pain. Connery's James Bond always won because he was invincible. Even staring down a death laser, he never had to worry about actually getting hurt. Bullets bounced off the guy like whiffle balls.

Conversely, Craig's Bond will always win because he can take any amount of punishment, physical or otherwise. Love of your life dies before your eyes? Walk it off. Best friend savagely massacred to get your attention? Tell them to leave a message. Broken neck? Well, that's just a minor setback.

The film's not perfect. It's long and a late sequence featuring Vesper and James in love could have been trimmed and had the same exact effect. (In fact, the film begins to drift right when it should really be gathering up steam for a big finish.) Some of the allusions to James Bond-isms come off kind of forced and awkward. I get that they were doing a prequel and wanted to tie in as much of the later stuff as possible, but you don't need to work in every single cliche into the first movie. Maybe he starts drinking shaken not stirred martinis and driving an Aston Martin, but he can devise the "moneypenny" nickname next time? A little bit can sometimes be too much of that sort of cutesy self-referential humor.

But, still, these are minor issues. Overall, this is a hugely satisfying success merely in terms of tight action filmmaking. It starts the Bond series off anew in an intriguing direction and makes me actually excited to see where things will go next. This crow tastes delicious!