Casino Royale (2006)

Posted by: Luna on Friday, November 17th, 2006

Starring: Daniel Craig (James Bond), Eva Green (Vesper Lynd), Mads Mikkelsen (Le Chiffre), Judi Dench (M)

James Bond 007 - Casino Royale

The Modern Bond is actually the original Bond. And Bond DOES break a sweat. Go Figure!

Review:

Here is the ultimate spoiler – This movie is a remake!  Casino Royale is actually a remake of the 1967 film.

Really good Quote from M - “Any thug can kill. I want you to take your ego out of the equation”

I apologize for the lengthy review/spoiler you are about to read. The MovieMucker team has graciously let me, a newbie reviewer, write up my thoughts on this flick. My writing is very first-person and I am frank with my observations. Here it goes…

The opening credits song and animations were really nice and well done. Great work. I will NOT say anything about the opening credit part because that is too well done for words to describe.

James isn’t covert at all – on the contrary he’s a very “public” and noticeable MI6 agent in this mission. The story starts off explaining that Bond has recently been promoted to 007 status, and fumbles throughout the mission to learn from his mistakes. You won’t find the Brosnan touch — womanizing and suave. Please expect to bare watching an unrefined, almost rude, and undesirable Bond this time round.

Bond is hot on the tail of a punk pipe-bomber. This takes place in Uganda, where the setting shows very primitive scenes of commoners surrounding a live animal fighting pit. Very soon into it, the movie the pipe-bomber gets wise to the Bond scoping him and makes a run for it. The pursuit is on, and boy it was amazing! Here you see James Bond in full physical form as he chases after bomber. Wherever James stumbles to catch him, he uses wit and agility to compensate. Amazing scenes of them fighting, dodging and running in-around-over-under a live construction site.

The mission unfolds for the audience, and it turns out that Uganda is the spot of a big investment deal between a crooked militant and a terrorist banker, named Le Chiffre. Bond learns to follow this money and to presume it has something to do with bombs.

Bond’s gears are churning and is quick to chase the money trail. He is able to track down the bad guy’s locations quite easily with the use of cell phone text messages and satellite “triangulation” pinpointing (how low-tech for this day and age!). (Forget the guns, the jet propelled backpacks or super flubber jumpy shoes — throughout the movie, expect Bond’s technological life-preserve to be Sony Ericson cell phones.)

The cell phones lead to Le Chiffre cohorts, which then reveal his ultra simple plan to us. Le Chiffre simply makes money for terrorists by investing in companies which he plans to destroy. He shorts airline stocks knowing that his pals would bring the planes down.

Aside: Although this doesn’t sound very original.. or even appropriate given of the recent events of 911, you don’t really think about how over-done this subplot is. The movie moves along quite well.

Another aside: This plot isn’t a very world-dominating, destroy the earth kinda plot. I was expecting it to be that, cuz all the others were such.

The systematic and analytic Bond wises up to the plan and beats up a bad guy and prevents a super huge prototype plane from blowing up. As a result, the airline’s stock doesn’t plummet as Le Chiffre expected and so he loses $105 million bucks.

Le Chiffre is in a pickle. So what does he do? Of course! Hosts a poker tournament where the pot is $105 million. At this point, we realize that le Chiffre isn’t a mega evil guy – we see that he’s very vulnerable, which is disappointing. We all expect Bond’s nemesis to be invicible and super hard to kill. But now, the armour is stripped off of Le Chiffre and we find out that he just wants to make money so his investors won’t beat him up. Sketch.

We are the audience of an hour-long poker tournament place which Bond plays and plays and plays. It was so long in fact, that the directors even wrote into the movie 3 intermissions for the poker players. And yes we have to watch Bond leave the table at all 3 intermissions and change clothes and take even take a cold shower! He eventually wins the $105 million pot, making Le Chiffre vulnerable again. His investors come at him with guns and meat clevers.

In the last half hour, Le Chiffre is out of the picture and a new subplot is introduced. Bond’s hot female banker woo his over and convinces him to leave the MI6 agency. Lovey dovey magic happens for about 10 minutes, where we are expected to empathize for Bond and understand why he’s so inadequate with love making and why he isn’t as good looking and suave as Pierce Brosnan or Sean Connery. After Bond is all softened up and we’re supposed to love him, the banker betrays him and steals the money so that that she can trade it spare the life of her boyfriend. Yes, another sub-sub-plot that turns into the real mission.

James is super mad and is on a rampage. He kicks butt and goes after the money. The banker gives the money to a Mr. White, and James tracks him down and shoots his leg and then asks Mr. White what’s going on. The end.

Afterthoughts:

This movie isn’t 007 quality – it is an Modern Urban Rambo.

You will like it if you like lots of realism in your Bond. You will hate it if you want him to be a Superman gigolo. He is man enough to drive a Ford. That’s his M.O. - practical, not flashy, and efficient. I think the director purposely made him drive that as visual reinforcement that this isn’t your typical Bond!

There are a lot of nuances that the director puts in but downplays them all, not giving any honourable mention. But they are so important to capture the gist and approach of this spy flick. He drives a fuel efficient car and not a roadster. He uses a big gun because little guns don’t work as well. He punches with his fist and not let a robot do his dirty work. He eats and sleeps and needs rest. He doesn’t have time to comb his hair. He will not be a very good next door neighbour. Did you pick up on these as well?

I understand that Casino Royale is the first mission for Bond, so we should see a very unrefined Bond. But this movie does not portray him in any redeeming sympathetic light which makes me want to root for him. He substitutes cleverness with physical stamina, and witty dialogue with arrogant remarks. Plus he doesn’t have any cool gadgets, which makes things less interesting for us guys, and the car he drives is barely shown and is only driven for 15 seconds. This is a great blog writeup of his lack of gadgets. engadget.com You can see this as a bad thing. OR you can see this Bond being the bravest Bond of all — breaking the tiring cliche of an obedient spy who loves working for a mean and behind the times employer, M.

The love scene was forced and awkward. No girl should fall for him. Bond seems to be the pursuer, which isn’t that cool.

It’s definitely a different aspect. The previous James Bond’s had a tried and true formula — smile, never sweat while fighting, always keep your face pretty, drive faster and change the gears a lot, and promote drinking, and spread that contagious aphrodisiac to the hottest women around you. But this Bond doesn’t use any of that formula. This Bond formula is work hard, use normal human tools to do your job, don’t be afraid of showing that 007s can indeed bleed, don’t ever show emotion, sex isn’t THAT important, and look disgruntled and mean after being shot at and punched and kicked and mamed. Hmm… do you want your Bond to be served up as Superman or regular-man? Up to you.

I have to say…it’s a little upsetting to not be able to see any close-ups of his Aston Martin.

Reading through a lot of IMDB posts, some of you like how raw and hard-edged this Bond is. True enough, this guy is impervious to rain sleet or snow… and also machetes, trains, gasoline tankers, pipe bombs and torture whips. But you know… you won’t see a Bond who looks dashing doing all those things.

And another thing.. how did this guy graduate from spy school? He makes himself widely broadcasted on the Internet, and makes gigantic cookie crumbs all over the globe.

50% of you will disagree with me and 50% will say I’m spot on with my evaluation. There is no winning for me, no matter how I spin Casino Royale. Up to you. Go watch it for the nice scenery, but don’t watch it and expect to idolize or woo over this dude.

******This spoiler submitted by Richard! Thanks so much!*******

Want to know more?
Read more about this film at The Internet Movie Database.