Casino Royale

Casino Royale (2006)

Director: Martin Campbell

Writers: Neal Purvis (screenplay), Robert Wade (screenplay), Paul Haggis (screenplay), Ian Flemming (novel)

Cast: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini, Caterina Murino, Simon Abkarian, Isaach De Bankolé, Jesper Christiansen, Ivana Milicevic, Tobias Menzies

Synopsis:

Newley promoted to 00 status, James Bond (Craig) is tasked with bringing in LeChiffre (Mikkelsen), a private banker, to the world's terrorists. LeChiffre sets up a high-stakes poker game at Montenegro's Casino Royale to recover a large sum of his clients' money after a failed attempt to short airline stock. Along with Treasury agent Vesper Lynd (Green), Bond is staked in the game to prevent LeChiffre from winning and, thus, forcing him to seek MI:6's protection from his enemies. Bond soon discovers that LeChiffre isn't acting alone and discovers a shadowy that may be pulling his strings.

First Impression:

In my previous reviews of The Living Daylights and Dr. No, I've mentioned that I grew up as a pretty big James Bond fan. As a child, I loved the goofiness of the Roger Moore outings, but as I grew older, I learned to appreciate the grittier side of bond and gravitated more towards the early Sean Connery outings and, of course, Dalton's two films. By the time Casino Royale was set to be released, I had grown a bit frustrated with the series. The Pierce Brosnan movies, which started out decently, had become a bit of a joke and the previous film, Die Another Day, was perhaps the worst the series had to offer (and that's saying a lot). Consequently, I was a tad skeptical of this new Bond and this new Bond film, but I gave it a show, and I was impressed. While I'm not a huge fan of reboots, the decision to take things back to the beginning seemed like a good idea. It allowed a whole new generation to be introduced to the character without worrying about 40 years of films to catch up on.  It's been a while since I've watched this film but's it's always been up there among my favorite Bond outings, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it holds up.

Story/Direction: 

"I've got a little itch, down there. Would you mind?"

This film came when the Bond franchise was at a bit of a crossroads, and in that regard, it's a bit like The Living Daylights. Just as with that earlier film, Casino Royale was released after a string of subpar entries that reduced the franchise to a bit of a joke. Like that earlier film, the producers sought to jumpstart the franchise by bringing the character back to his novel roots. The quippy, goofy, gadget-filled shenanigans of the Brosnan era were replaced with the grit and kinetic action of the new and quite popular Bourne series.

So, what does that all mean for the story? Well, it means no megalomaniacal villains bent on world domination, living in a hollowed-out volcano in the south pacific. This film definitely wanted to remind the world that James Bond wasn't a campy superhero spy that breezed through his assignments with a wink and joke. No, this was a cold, brutal man whose job was to kill people for the British government. In a sense, this was your father's James Bond.

However, there were flaws with this story, the most noticeable of which is pacing. The first act of Casino Royale is fantastic; it's got great action, does a good job in setting up the story and even has some decent laughs that don't detract from the tone the director was trying to establish. The second act is where things go off the rails a bit, in my opinion. The problem here is that a poker game can work very well within the pages of a novel because we hear the internal thoughts of characters, which helps build the suspense. You can't do this in a film, though, and what you get instead is just a bunch of guys playing cards, which is...well, it's boring. I understand that the poker game was a huge part of the movie's plot, but it was just too much, and I was relieved whenever the movie would break away from the game for whatever reason. I feel similarly about the third act as I struggled to find the point of it all. We're treated to Bond's convalescence after suffering trauma at the hands of LeChiffre and his blossoming relationship with Vesper as they wander through the canals of Venice, all to set up the appearance of the "real" villains at the end. It just seemed tacked on to me. 

Acting:

As has become usual when I review a Bond film, I'll break the acting down into three sections, The Bond, The Bond Girl and The Bond Villain.

The Bond: The casting of Daniel Craig as James Bond was not without its controversy. There was even a website set up protesting the casting. From what I could tell, most of this had to do with his hair color, though I don't know for sure. As far as I'm concerned, he did a fantastic job as Bond. He was able to show the cold detachment that one whose livelihood was murder might exude, but he also showed a great deal of vulnerability in certain scenes. Like Dalton's portrayal 20 years earlier, this was a three-dimensional Bond. A human Bond. 

The Bond Girl: While I've not been a huge fan of some of the changes made in the franchise these past 60 years, the fact that Bond girls have evolved from mere sex symbols to actual characters is a change I can get behind. Eva Green's Vesper is a foil for Bond and frequently calls him on his bullshit, which up until that point was fairly uncommon in the series. From the moment we meet Vesper, the audience is aware something's not quite right about her and keeps us engaged to find out what that is. A great job by Green and, I'd say, one of the better Bond girl portrayals in the series. 

The Bond Villain: I love Mads Mikkelsen as an actor, but LeChiffre just got on my nerves. There were just too many quirks to the character. First, he's asthmatic. It's an unusual trait for a villain, to be sure, and if they'd left it there, it would've been fine. Instead, they also had to give him a messed-up eye that causes him to weep blood on occasion. Again, in and of itself not so bad and actually kind of cool. Okay, is that it? Nope, we're also going to have him be a math prodigy that can instantly figure out probabilities in his head. Basically, the villain in this movie is a cross between Will Hunting, Milhouse from the Simpsons, and a guy with a pink eye. Kidding aside, while the character irked me, I thought Mikkelsen did a fine job as he's one of the best at looking and acting sinister.

Visuals:

Most of the visual effects in this film, like most James Bond films, are done practically and in-camera. For all the ups and downs this series has provided over the years, it always manages to impress with its visuals (Die Another Day's regrettable CGI notwithstanding). There are some impressive visuals in this film, from a bonkers car wreck to an entire building sinking into the Grand Canal. One of director Martin Campbell's really cool visual choices was to shoot the pre-credit sequence in black and white. It really helped sell the fact that this was a different Bond than we had grown used to and in some ways was harkening back to a Bond of a bygone era.

Music:

As usual with Bond films, I focus this section on the movie's theme song as most of the rest of the score is generally built off of that. The song for this film was You Know My Name, performed by Chris Cornell, and I think it's up there as one of the best theme songs in the series. That's saying a lot because I don't care all that much for 90s alternative rock, which Cornell was a central figure in. However, his vocal style really lent itself well to the song, which picks up on the film's marketing that this was indeed a different James Bond. Also, it's interesting to note that Cornell was the first American-born male singer to record a song for a James Bond film. 

Action:

The meat and potatoes of every James Bond movie is the action. Like the visuals, regardless of how good the movie is, this series rarely disappoints with its action. In Casino Royale, we are treated to several intense and visceral fights, a fantastic foot chase that helped popularize parkour as a sport and a marvelous action sequence in Miami airport. For any issues that the story may have, the action makes up for it. I just wish it was spread out a little more and not all confined to the first act.

Final Verdict

I still dig this movie a lot. The pacing still aggravates me, but, all in all, it's an enjoyable ride and worth the occasional slow moment or two. Check it out if you're into James Bond or just like fun action movies.