Casino Royale (Blu-ray)
APPROX. 144 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2006 - MPA RATING: PG-13
" It's before suave, before glib--before Bond became Bond. Radical? You bet.
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All the pre- and post-production hoopla surrounding the new James Bond film has centered on Daniel Craig. He's not right for the part was the clamor, or He's surprisingly good. But Craig's debut as 007 is probably the least radical change that was made to writer Ian Fleming's very first Bond novel, Casino Royale--initially published in the U.K. as You Asked for It (1953).
By now, you've heard that this version is grittier than the other 007 films, with more plot and less quips and gadgets. Director Martin Campbell (who also directed "GoldenEye") calls this "the most realistic Bond film since 'From Russia with Love.'" That's no small change, but screenwriters and directors have been tinkering with that formula ever since Sean Connery dropped out as the original cinematic Bond.
Fleming's first novel was an installment, like any other 007 adventure. You could read the Bond novels out of order and still make sense of them, because every book was a self-contained mission. This one just happened to be first, but as one of the thinner novels in the series it didn't come close to answering all of the questions we had about this British secret agent. Mystery was part of the package. The new "Casino Royale" (not to be confused with the 1967 spy-spoof starring David Niven and Peter Sellers, a bastard child that Bond fans refuse to acknowledge) takes a strikingly new direction and gives us an origin film. Instead of seeing how Batman or The Fantastic Four got their powers, attitudes, and mannerisms, we get the full scoop on how Bond started wearing his trademark tuxedo, how he developed a taste for shaken-not-stirred martinis, how he acquired that 1964 silvery Aston Martin, and how he became a womanizer who wanted no emotional involvement. It's before suave, before glib--before Bond became Bond. Radical? You bet.
Screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis ("Crash") give us a script that goes back in time using black-and-white flashbacks to show some of those origins, while incorporating others in the mission itself. The novel had Bond going head-to-head with Le Chiffre (the cipher), an agent for SMERSH, the Soviet assassination bureau (which actually existed). Screenwriters jettisoned the Soviet plotlines years ago, thinking that a public with no sense of history (Americans are now measuring themselves against fifth graders!) wouldn't be able to "identify" with Cold War tensions, but this trio goes farther than any of them. Now, Bond is operating in real time--our time. Now he's trying to foil terrorists in places like Uganda. Instead of playing baccarat in Monte Carlo, it's Texas Hold 'Em in Montenegro. Instead of every woman being "his type," Bond is only drawn to married women. Less complications. Yeah, right.
In the tradition of Bond films, the location filming (Italy, Montenegro, Bahamas, England, Czech Republic) is striking and the opening is a spectacular action sequence--this time showcasing the talents of Sebastien Foucan, who founded "freerunning" as an urban athletic expression that was showcased in a piece called "Jump London." Foucan plays a terrorist in Madagascar who's chased by Bond in an amazing sequence that seems like "Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger" with a more realistic look. These guys fly, and it looks as if they're really running up the tops of cranes and jumping from crane to crane and girder to girder some 200 feet off the ground--which is exactly what the stunts called for, we learn on one of the extras. The stunts in "Casino Royale" are superb, and so is the pacing--something which has been problematic in the past for directors who couldn't figure out how to balance plot and character development with enough explosions and special effects to satisfy the public's growing appetite for pyrotechnics and Fx eye-candy. But Campbell gets it right. I didn't think the 144-minute film dragged one bit, with the possible exception of some rather lengthy poker scenes.
The casting also seems solid, with Judi Dench returning as M., Giancarlo Giannini as Bond's contact, Mathis, Jeffrey Wright as the now-black C.I.A. agent Felix Leiter, Catarina Murino as the semi-villainous Solange, Eva Green as Vesper Lynd, a British treasury agent assigned to watch and protect the money that Bond has been issued. In keeping with the trend toward realism, Mads Mikkelsen plays it nowhere near as over-the-top as previous Bond villains, but like everyone else in the film his performance is spot-on believable.
If there's a flaw in "Casino Royale," it's the same flaw that was in the book. It was never as sexy, tense, or action-packed as some of the jazzier Bond novels. The villain is a money man for an assassination bureau (or, in this case, a bankroller for international terrorists), and to stop him Bond doesn't have to ride in a moon buggy, foil a rocket launch, or keep a lunatic from destroying the planet. All he has to do, apart from those obligatory action scenes, is play poker and win. It's the premise and plot that aren't as strong as other Bond novels, but that makes Campbell's direction all the more applause-worthy. And don't panic, Bond fans. There's plenty of action and raw realism here, including torture, explosions, and the usual amount of killings.
