My first encounter with James Bond is a rather fuzzy memory of seeing The Spy Who Loved Me at some distant cousin's house in the Boston area when we were visiting back in the late 1970s (I wanna say 1978 for a variety of reasons). It was soon after this that my father gave me his collection of Signet paperbacks to read (I remember reading On Her Majesty's Secret Service for a book report in the 4th grade...a bit advanced for someone that age, but I loved the book...still have the collection...it's a bit dog-eared as I've read them a number of times each, but I plan on giving them to my son at some point when he's old enough). Moonraker was the only Bond film I got to see in theaters with my dad before he died (which is why I have this love/hate relationship with the film...its one of the worst Bond films, but I have a personal affection for it).
Regardless of where the films have gone or done, I've always been enamoured of Ian Fleming's original novels which have barely been adapted for the big screen...until now.
Casino Royale has had a long convoluted history in making its way to the big screen and I'll leave that story for others to retell (you can look it up on line)...what I will tell you is that this is not just a great Bond film, its also a great movie. Taking their lead from Batman Begins and being challenged to make Bond relevant for the 21st Century by The Bourne Identity, the producers have taken the character back to his rough roots as Fleming conceived him and as he's almost never been portrayed on screen (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball and On Her Majesty's Secret Service were all either spot on or close enough).
The plot is rather simple to follow...after being awarded his license to kill, Bond is on a mission tracking terrorist funding. This leads him to several locations and he's eventually inserted into a high stakes poker game to force the money man into losing all the money he's holding for various terrorists and then having to turn to M.I. 6 for protection (where he will, in turn, give up info he has). Bond succeeds in his mission, but not without a high cost to himself.
This film starts differently than the other Bond films. There is no gun barrel logo and we're into the monchromatic pre-titles sequence showing Bond's kills that earn him his "00" status (in what may be the shortest pre-titles sequence yet). The opening titles contain no silhouetted naked women or the smashing Cold War symbols. This is all about Bond and violence and the look has more of a Saul Bass retro sixties feel than a Maurice Binder look. The title sequence also helps enhance the theme song that made for a very "meh" radio song. As an added note, David Arnold's instrumental arrangement of "You Know My Name" is peppered throughout the film and helps prop up Chris Cornell's bland lyrics that they remind you of (in a good way).
Once the "film proper" starts, we hit the ground running as Bond chases a target into a construction site in an amazing and exciting sequence that is made up of realistic physical stunts. This sequence has to be seen to be believed as Sebastien Foucan climbs and jumps his way up beams and walls that has only been accomplished using CGI before. This scene is followed by a few other action sequences over the course of the film. All of them feel "realistic" and "down to Earth" and keep the film moving along at a nice clip (you may have heard complaints that at two and one half hours the film feels long, but I felt it moved along perfectly and didn't feel long...unlike another film I just saw that ran the same length and felt twice as long...but more on The DaVinci Code next time).
The acting is all spot on and well done. Craig's Bond has a lot of depth to him...more so than Dalton's hard edged portrayal back in the 1980s. This is a rookie who will do what he has to in order to get the job done, but he also makes plenty of rookie mistakes.
Eva Green's Vesper Lynd is also a great, well realized character. And Mads Mikkelsen brings the perfect amount of menace to Le Chiffre, the villain who is unlike any Bond villain we've seen (finally breaking the Dr. Evil parody we had grown so used to seeing). He's all about business and in the gruesome torture scene (lifted directly from Fleming...even down to some of the dialog), he gets right down to business.
Three other brief mentions of Fleming characters are in order...Mathis makes his first screen appearance played by Giancarlo Gianinni. He's played a bit differently here than in Fleming's novels, but it serves the film's purposes well and I hope we get to see him again. Jeffrey Wright steps into the role of Felix Leiter, Bond's C.I.A. counterpart. It's not a big role by any means, but Wright puts more of a mark on it than most other actors who played him before. I also hope he returns in the next film with a bigger role (Leiter is supposed to become one of Bond's closest friends).
Lastly, in what could have been an oddity, Judi Dench returns as M. I'm not sure how I feel about this bit of casting. A true reboot should have jettisoned her from the role simply to keep confusion out of the equation...but its simple enough to say that this is not the same Bond as the previous 20 films (which did have some sort of odd-ballish continuity) and that there's no reason why this M can't be a different M. She is a bit different than before, while remaining somewhat similar in personality. What I'm saying is she works perfectly for the role in spite of having that "leftover" feel.
One thing I'm glad they didn't do in "modernizing" the franchise is go for that edgy look to the film. A few years ago, Quentin Tarantino had met with the producers suggesting that they finally do this novel as a period piece. Thankfully they ignored him. The camera would have been all over the place and the film would have had that "independant" look it doesn't deserve. The filmmakers have kept the film looking as beautiful and sumptuous as all the others.
This isn't just a great Bond film, it's a great film (my dad would have loved this film) and it's going to be a long two years before we get another one. I can't wait and while my personal hope would be to see a remake of Live and Let Die that's closer to Fleming's novel (modernized and without the blatant racism of course), I'm looking forward to wherever they take Craig's interpretation next.
Next time, The Prestige and The DaVinci Code.
Be seeing you.
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