I thoroughly enjoyed this incarnation of Bond. Making grandiose claims for an action adventure franchise would be foolish, but it is hard to quibble with the choices made in ‘Casino Royale.’ You get a much harder edge to Bond with Daniel Craig (actually similar to the excellent but much-maligned first Timothy Dalton outing as Bond), and the external scars that he sports at several points in the movie (you see bruised knuckles several hours after a fight, along with the lacerations to the face) speak to someone who is much more clearly only one step away from an assassin rather than the dandy spy that we have seen in recent years.
The main action sequence comes early in the movie and is utterly satisfying, not least because the guy Bond is chasing appears to have learned his moves from B-13: he climbs impossible surfaces, bounces off hard objects and his body appears made of rubber. Craig huffs and puffs behind him.
The dialogue is often superb, and certainly better than anything in earlier Bond movies. There is a sequence when Bond meets Vesper Lynd on a train and they guess each other’s back stories that is funny, poignant, and exhibits the kind of repartee that is rare in movies these days. I’m assuming Paul Haggis was responsible for much of the dialogue in the movie and it’s great stuff.
The first two-thirds of the movie works better than the last third, not just because the action is front-loaded, but because the humor is better, darker. The movie does slow down too much near the end, and tries too hard to explain how the events at Casino Royale and Bond’s apparent [SPOILER] betrayal by Vesper scar and shape him into the Bond that we know from other movies. Also Jeffrey Wright is completely and utterly wasted.
Still, this is a good way to spend a Friday afternoon, and it reaps some of the same benefits as ‘Batman Begins’ in its attempt to go back to the beginning and understand how James Bond became who he is. The scene where he first tries on a tailored tuxedo, and marvels at how it makes him look, is a wonderful foreshadowing of all the other Bonds who managed to look fine effortlessly
i liked this a lot. in this very fruitful week i managed to see borat, the departed, and this, and this is the one i enjoyed the most. i blame for this eva green, whom i didn’t know. i like the mixture of genteelity and vulnerability she brings to her part, though i must say i found her much better before she turned all mushy. the kind of flirting banter she has with craig before they fall in love is one of the most immediately enjoyable things the movies can offer me. great.
i’m always ready to see italy glorified in the movies, especially the part of the country i come from (venice, the lakes). but it hurts to see a venetian palazzo crumble! great touch.
i guess those big yellow blobs that get blown up at the end are floaters that keep the palace above water level. people were talking about putting floaters in venice when i left, some one hundred and fifty years ago, to keep it from sinking. i guess they did it. i get all my education from the movies and the novels. they serve me well.
oh, and the bodies exhibit. funny that we do, indeed, have it in miami right now, though it couldn’t have been there when casino royale was shot. and that pretty pretty building is most definitely not in miami, since miami has exactly, like, two pretty buildings and that is not one of them. but it’s very cool how the twisted, raw bodies foreshadow the final poker game (there’s a scene that takes place around a table of bodies playing poker; haven’t seen the exhibit and i’m not going to either, but it must be there, cuz i don’t imagine it is easy to rearrange those plasticized mothers).
daniel craig is really excellent. it brings a lot of bad-boy-with-good-heart cool to the part. not sure that’s the way james bond is supposed to be, but it works for me.
is this another film that couldn’t have been done without cellphones? MI:III, too, could not have been done without cellphones. i really enjoy the way cellphones have become as indispensible to the action genre as cars. i think it works well. i always thought cellphones were a very masculine gadget, and now we have the movies to confirm it.
i forgot to mention that THE COMMENT ABOVE CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!
Well–since we’ve spoiled, I loved this Bond until the last 30 minutes when it fell into a series of weak endings (even with the destruction of a palazzo) and a strangely sappy Euro-romance ‘twixt its protagonists, both suddenly turned from sharp-tongued aggressors into big softies. I really dug Craig, and yeah Green was way better than I expected, and there’s a lot in this movie to relish, not least the bounding all over construction or the banter between the leads already mentioned. But what a shame that ending was (those endings were).
At least the film lacked invisible cars, ice palaces, villains who feel no pain, death rays from outer space, moonwalking, etc., etc., etc. I liked the pre-title sequence (the audience was all aflutter worried the film was going to be in glorious B&W) as well as the title sequence (what, no naked ladies in glorious sillouette???). The product placements from the Ford Corporation made me laugh. Craig was/is a good choice and Nicola was all squirrely with delight every time someone quipped or spoke in epigrams or whispered innuendo or was beaten senseless by some bald-headed minion. Me, I grew tired of it all within the first twenty minutes, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t delights to be had (the dialogue Chris mentioned). The last half-hour was a drawn out disppointment. So let me get this straight . . . Vesper’s Algerian boyfriend was kidnapped (by whom???) and so she had to sell Bond out to Mr. White who then killed Le Cheffre (Mr. White is now working for who . . . the Ugandan terrorists/freedom fighters??). But then, while Bond’s balls recover, the two lovebirds flitter about until it’s time to transfer the funds into Vesper’s secret account (as opposed to Mr. White’s which would be far more efficient). Meanwhile, Vesper has fallen in love with Bond (or was all that a ruse) and so will double cross Mr. White or is she double crossing Le Cheffre (who is already dead) . . . AND who was the guy with the glasses AND the eyepatch? And then the house in Venice crumbles and the silver case with all the money falls into the water and, presumably, gets caught up in all the architectural debris, BUT THEN Mr. White has the case suddenly . . . magically . . . and Vesper, who has sold out everyone she loves, martyrs herself in an elevator much to Bond’s great sadness. So he then kills Mr. White at the best B&B Europe has to offer and the film ends. And why, exactly, was Geoffrey Wright in the film?
Honestly, Jeff, it’s “Le Chiffre” not “Le Cheffre.” No wonder you didn’t understand the plot. That “i” is the key to the whole thing. Chiffre means cypher, and cypher means “a secret or disguised manner of writing, whether by characters arbitrarily invented (app. the earlier method), or by an arbitrary use of letters or characters in other than their ordinary sense, by making single words stand for sentences or phrases, or by other conventional methods intelligible only to those possessing the key” (OED). See? It’s meant to be unintelligible, and it succeeds brilliantly.
oh, vesper, what a brave way to die! only a tall, doe-eyed, sharp-witted woman with a posh english accent that no longer exists (simon tells me) could have pulled that off. how could you resist the temptation of opening the door for poor desperate james? such a romantic death…
While we’re at it (I haven’t seen this yet, but I’m eager to post something), top five favorite Bond films in order? I’m not so sure about my own list, but here it is:
1. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
2. The Spy Who Loved Me
3. From Russia With Love
4. For Your Eyes Only
5. Dr. No
Spike TV is doing a Bond Thanksgiving marathon, so I’ve seen way too much Roger Moore recently. I’m not sure I can do this in order of preference, but in chronological order, my top six are:
From Russia with Love
Goldfinger
Live and Let Die
living Daylights
Tomorrow Never Dies
Casino Royale (2006)
Best Bond song? We can probably all agree on Duran Duran in ‘View to a kill’ but second? Shirley Bassey (for both Goldfinger and Diamonds Are forever, but not Moonraker), Carly Simon, Tom Jones, Nancy Sinatra, Paul McCartney, and who could forget A-Ha?
I agree, Chris: “Diamonds are Forever” by Shirley Bassey. She even salvages “Moonraker,” though it’s been said that she despised it. Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World” doesn’t count, since it’s not in the title sequence. But it’s up there. John Barry has done some amazing stuff, though. The entire soundtrack of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is just perfect. Speaking of amazing albums, everyone must buy the new Yo La Tengo, “I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.”
By the way, the original title song for Thunderball was “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” and it was sung by Shirley Bassey, then Dione Warwick did a version. Then they went with Tom Jones and a different song. Oh well. First thought best thought.
Yes, new Yo La Tengo disc is excellent.
The earlier Bond films didn’t shy away from presenting the Russians as villains, albeit they were less spectacular and evil than the single-minded egomaniacs of SPECTRE, like Blofeld, Goldfinger, Dr. No. But this Bond movie completely avoids the slightest suggestion of linking terrorism with radical Islamic groups, even though it must be fully aware that every time “terrorism” is invoked, the audience–at least every American–must think of Bin Laden and 911 (which does get an oblique reference by M). I wonder why? A desire not to pile on the Muslims any further or not to invoke a reality which might undermine the frivolity of the international scene that the Bond movies rely on? Or because the “War on Terror” hasn’t acquired the popular culture juice the Cold War had by the early 1960s? Black Africans provide a handy alternative,the Ugandans fighting with machetes and threatening the super-blonde girlfriend of Le Chiffre with amputation. For better or worse, most of the audience won’t develop strong feelings or associations regarding Uganda, Madagascar and The Bahamas. Technology–like the world’s largest jet–becomes the target, rather than concentrations of civilians in the heart of urban locations. Is the backdrop for the new Bond a sign of restraint, nostalgia, denial or confusion–is it entirely meaningless? The first twenty minutes of the film made me think we were going to have a gritty “realistic” Bond, where the War on Terror would take on all those grim ambiguities that the Cold War has in something like LeCarre….but then it went the route of the travelogue film. Venice of all places!
I don’t really have much of a point here–just that it was hard to figure out what was at stake for that old monolith “The West” which might be either a good sign that the imperialist sense of The West as a totality has declined–though when Bond has an (incomplete) sexual meeting with a woman of another race, she must still die–or that we have a new (old) fantasy of the west as the bulwark against all third-world chaos (the shadowy organization Bond starts to go after exploits the excesses of the less “civilized” folk like the Ugandans).
Weren’t the single-minded egomaniacs of SPECTRE basically Russian (or Eastern bloc) defectors? (like former KGB who had become frustrated with the small-mindedness of the Kremlin)–a concept of villainly that is carried all the way to Octopussy. I think Michael makes a great point. Sounds like the new Bond is directionless without the old world view.
yes, this is an excellent comment, michael. we are now sadly enemyless, partly because the bush administration has botched our enemy-of-choice by being too sweeping, ignorant, and racist. non-descript africans are the best we can do without sounding equally mean and stupid. even darfur, alexander cockburn suggests, is a convenient diversion from the real problem… not that i agree (darfus is a terrible tragedy), but it’s the point michael’s making, pushed to extremity.
I, too, think Michael’s point is really damn smart–all the talk about Casino‘s gritty reality attends to the film’s formal qualities (and even those more in relation to the prior cartoon Bonds than to some more precise notion of gritty realism), and sidesteps the ideological emptiness of the new film. But I’d slightly disagree, in that I think the new film’s id. empt. is the same as the old ones’.
My favorite Bond villains are Goldfinger and Blofeld, both of whom are vaguely East-er in Europeanness, but who lack much in the way of realpolitik clarity. The Bond films only ever invoked Russia in the same vague, sinister way the new film invokes terrorism: plots and plotting, all meant to accomplish money (and/or power), disconnected from any definable political dimensions. Usually–sure there are exceptions.
Wasn’t that the beauty of their diversion? Global politics as cartoon spectacle? (Wasn’t the last Brosnan film vaguely tied to North Korea, but then slipped away from specific nuclear fears to ice palaces and cars with spikes on their wheels? I honestly can’t recall. Outside of Goldfinger, and after Richard Kiel’s teeth or Blofeld’s cat, I recall little about villains in Bond films, except occasionally actors. Christopher Walken, Telly Savalas, Yaphet Kotto, Louis Jourdan. One of them had voodoo on his side, another had Grace Jones. It blurs.) I’m pretty sure fighting Al Qaeda operatives would not fit in this model; maybe a mean power-hungry muslim, but he’d probably be played by Tony Shalhoub and he’d be exploiting his fellow radicals as a ruse to make a lot of money. Bond doesn’t fit or fight with sleeper cells. He fights guys with fucking fortresses. Even though fortless, the new guy bleeds tears and has access to lots of cool poisons when he’s not flipping about on his supercool boat while doing obscure text-messaging.
That said, Michael nails the disconnect between the acclaim for the new and its actual relation to earlier Bond tropes, particularly the figure of “the African” and the doomed exotic woman. And, yeah, Venice.
John–I think you’re right, they all have vague connections to the Eastern Bloc/Soviet Union…ultimately they hate the Free World, as represented by England and the US, while this new guy seems to thrive on the chaos of globalization (so many local conflicts to exploit.)
Mike–I see your point, but I have to disagree somewhat about the ideology of the earlier films–Bond seems to me to spring entirely from the early-mid twentieth century mindset of dimming colonialism, Britain in decline but still casting a shadow, the last gentleman spy before the American model entirely takes over. The Cold War provides his entire reason for being–even when it’s not explicitly invoked, it’s there as the presumption of a world split entirely in two between Freedom and Totalitarianism. Bond vs the villain is the dichotomy made personal, each fully representing his “side” of the conflict. Of course, I admit my argument works better for some films than others.
As Gio points out, despite the best efforts of Bush and Blair, radical Islam hasn’t yet achieved the same monolithic status as Communism. So the spy genre has really lost its ideological bedrock which was always reliable despite the cartoonishness. The filmmakers and Bond seem to be totally at a loss–hence, the mish mash of Ugandans, Albanians and vaguely Nazi-looking white guys.
I wonder if Bond can be adequately revived without confronting terrorism more directly–it seems to me that a show like 24 has been much more successful in setting up the ideological threat the genre needs to keep itself relevant. Jack Bauer, more of a connecting point between laptops and cell phones, is the new model. But maybe the genre isn’t that relevant any more, given the current situation—is that a loss?
The point that “the West” does not have the old certainties of the Cold War, and that the worldview of spies is therefore more complicated and confused is now sufficiently well-developed that is even referenced in Bond movies. Judi Dench accused Brosnan of being a dinosaur unable to move beyond the Cold War about three Bond movies ago (I can’t remember which exactly). The same point could be made about John Le Carre, who has done some very fine writing since the end of the Cold War, but has never — in my opinion, at least — managed to recapture the compelling storytelling of the Smiley novels. Drug corporations and the like are too faceless to be able to match a Karla, for example. They are evil, but evil without character, and without human interest.
As Reynolds points out, it was never really the backdrop of the Cold War that made the Bond movies: it was the over-the-top bad guys, bent on world domination. In the Cold War, a narrative that placed the Brits in a position of influence would be laughable. But in a world where individual megalomaniacs loose themselves from the shackles of Cold War routine (which was, after all, about avoiding anything that could lead to nuclear war, not encouraging it), the lone superspy from a former colonial power might have a role. There was a tendency for the official American and Russian governments to look slightly silly in the old Sean Connery Bond films because they always suspected each other instead of the loose cannon.
Michael is right on regarding Bond as, in some sense, appealing to a Britain that knew it was in decline and increasingly irrelevant in world affairs. But I do think that the Daniel Craig Bond is still something a little different from the usual Bonds; there is ideology buried in the character that Bond plays that does make Casino Royale more gritty — not just in texture, but in ideology. Craig is far more like the Harry Palmer character played by Michael Caine than the Bond played by Moore, Brosnan, or even Connery. Harry Palmer represented a working class, or at least not privileged, entry into a world of spies that was portrayed as clubby, elitist, and just plain stupid. Those early Len Deighton novels and the movies based upon them largely poked fun at the Cold War, and the bureaucrats who ran it. Palmer was far less ideological than his superiors, and his character undermined the dominant narrative of the Cold War. Craig seems to me to be playing a similar kind of outsider, and in so doing, he also encourages us to question the stories our governments tell us. The line when Eva Green reminds Craig that if he loses, the government will be financing terrorism, and his smirk in response, really tells us all we need to know about how ludicrous the official storyline is.
Personally, I think what made the Bond movies wasn’t the over-the-top bad guys. The villains simply make Bond go, and watching him go where he goes is what satisfies our desires. He circulates on the pleasure peripheries where everything is nice suits, fine restaurants, swanky hotels, golf courses, etc. My favorite bits in the films when I was growing up weren’t the villain bits (boooring!). I liked the bits where he goes to visit Q in his lab. Do you like…stuff? Why, yes, don’t we all? Bond is all about fetishism, from gadgets to girls. Going to a good Bond movie is like getting really high end swag.
But I don’t mean to derail this lovely discussion about geopolitics.
And hey, let me plug my favorite Bond movie again. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service also happens to be a good holiday film, in spite of its ending. Put it in yer queue.
i don’t know about ideology, i just thought this was crap.
you don’t mean that, right?
i preferred bond when he was silly and the films not quite so serious.
how many stars are you going to give it?
times have changed, you know. camp is dead, thank goodness.
Jeff said:
Questions, questions, questions, flooding into the mind of the concerned young person today. This is what Roger Ebert said about Diamonds are Forever: “It has been claimed that the plot is too complicated to describe, but I think I could if I wanted to. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to, though. The point in a Bond adventure is the moment, the surface, what’s happening now. The less time wasted on plot, the better.”
I liked Casino Royale better than any James Bond film made in the last twenty years. Which isn’t saying much, I know. But I think we can safely say the franchise is alive and well–let’s just hope Michael G. Wilson and Co. stay away from those dreadful John Gardner novels (Brokenclaw???).
Silly and serious Bond–you must accept both. Think of it this way: the silly and serious alternate like the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon. The silly Moonraker was followed by the super-serious For Your Eyes Only. I imagine Daniel Craig will wear an exploding rubber nose in the next outing.
I agree with everything everyone said here. The last thirty minutes or so are dull. And, frankly, the poker game is a bit dull as well. Frustrating, too, because it’s obvious Le Chiffre’s tell signals cheating not bluffing. Maybe Bond needs to learn a lesson or two–as some of you have pointed out. Anwyway, I preferred more twists and turns, Ã la The Lady Eve. Instead, it’s more bankrolling. Perhaps Texas Hold ‘Em isn’t as exciting as the lesser-known Chemin de Fer, but I wouldn’t know.
Jeffrey Wright was a breath of fresh air in the poker sequences (I have to admit that I like it when Felix Leiter comes to the rescue). And Mads Mikkelsen is excellent, though he should have used his real name instead of Le Chiffre.
i watched license to kill tonight, and i have to say both that it is a better action film, and a better bond film, than the new casino royale, and that timothy dalton was a much better bond than craig (or brosnan).
Crack pipe talk.
I’m not sure I’d go as far as Arnab here, if only because it is too soon to tell how Craig will evolve as a Bond. But I do think that Dalton was an interesting Bond. He had a much harder edge than his predecessors and Brosnan, and nowhere more than in ‘License to Kill’ with its revenge theme. As I noted above, I put the first Dalton, ‘Living Daylights’ into my top six Bond movies, mostly because they were trying to reinvent Bond in that movie (marginally less sexist, more serious) and that was refreshing after Roger Moore. But for all those same reasons, I still think Craig is very promising. One thing I will say for ‘License to Kill’ is that Robert Davi was a truly great Bond villain; far more chilling than the usual ones. Whatever happened to him?
Paul Greengrass spits on James Bond.
Benicio del Toro did that once.
i will probably see the new bond film in a theater and not on dvd but looking around i see that critics who lauded the first one are iffy about this one for precisely the same reasons that i disliked the first one. oh well, it is my curse and destiny to be ahead of my times. i must embrace it. in any event, even as i expect my desires will not be rewarded, i will repeat that i see no point in turning the james bond franchise into just another action franchise (no matter how well acted or produced). for virtuoso handheld camerawork and a tortured hero we already have the bourne films (and they’re all better than the re-booted casino royale). for long, boring poker sequences we have espn2. i demand my bad puns, my ridiculous villains (ideally with three nipples, a persian cat, or a ludicrous henchman), my femme fatales with silly names, q, cars that turn into submarines and then into rocketships. i demand a cheesy opening credits sequence and song. i demand that bond be fastidious about cocktails. i demand the best wines available to humanity and i demand them now.
I suspect Arnab will ignore my review (posted last night) and post something on this thread just for spite. Let’s see how many minutes it takes him to do so . . . 45? 50?
this is eerie. well called, jeff. ehehehehe.
@arnab:
We’re multimillionaires.
We shall buy this place
and fire you immediately.
Yes, we’ll buy this place, and we’ll
install a fucking jukebox in here…
we’ve gone on holiday by mistake.
don’t threaten me with that fish!