chris kilby
Posts: 1189
Joined: 31/3/2010
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Anywoo, back on topic. Here’s my Casino Royale review wot I wrote at the time – blimey! – way back in 2006…
Steve McQueen lives!
Daniel Craig’s triumphant debut as James Bond proves once and for all just how deranged the online reception to news of his casting was – Osama bin Laden didn’t get that kind of press. After all the abuse which was heaped on him the plaudits must taste sweeter than a Vodka Martini. Shaken not stirred, of course.
Craig has proved his hysterically shrill nay-sayers spectacularly wrong - I hear premature indignation is a problem which afflicts a lot of fanboys. Doubtless they’ll be the very ones who’ll wail the loudest when Craig inevitably hands in his licence to kill some day. I bet the twat behind CRAIGNOTBOND.COM feels a right Pussy Galore now.* If television is the idiot’s lantern then the internet is the assh*le’s megaphone.
Try to picture any other Bond pulling off what Daniel Craig does here and not just the painfully visceral fight scenes – the best since George Lazenby in OHMSS, an obvious touchstone here and proof of just how ahead of its time the most underrated Bond film of all was. Could anyone imagine a naked Roger Moore tied to that chair having his knackers tenderised by a knotted rope? And believe me, I’ve tried! I know it’s woefully premature, but (whisper it) better than Connery…?
The casting of Daniel Craig does mark the apotheosis of Michael G Wilson’s curious obsession with From Russia From Love and his neverending succession of Red Grant clones, which began with For Your Eyes Only, by finally casting a blond-haired, blue-eyed Robert Shaw-type as James Bond himself! When Craig was first rumoured to be replacing Brosnan, I naturally assumed it was a mistake and he was a shoo-in for Le Chiffre. Could this be a deliberate irony given that this Bond (ie, Fleming’s Bond) is a “borderline” psycho and almost a villain himself?
Casino Royale plays with Bond iconography in a clever and far more subtle manner than Die Another Day which looks even more heavy-handed now by comparison. Just look at the sly, playful digs at Bond’s trademark excesses – “Stephanie Broadchest” and Le Chiffre’s knowing mockery of needlessly elaborate torture methods. No emasculating lasers here then. Bond even winces at his first self-conscious attempt at a quip. Although that could have been Craig doing a Harrison Ford.
Rough round the edges, this Bond is very much a work in progress. We never really get to hear the James Bond Theme until the very end and after he’s said that line for the first time. Tellingly this affirmation is as tragic as it is triumphant. Like Batman Begins and Revenge of the Sith, we get to see the origins of the tux, the Aston Martin, “Shaken not stirred,” and, best of all, the true significance of the trademark gubarrel logo. Then there’s that other longstanding Bond tradition – the obvious stunt doubles. A sly nod to Roger Moore, perhaps?
Thematically rich, Casino Royale is surprisingly tender, moving and, dare I say it, grown-up for a Bond movie. Thanks in no small part to the refreshingly vulnerable an un-pneumatic, if uncertainly accented, Eva Green. The weird thing is – and it’s testament to what a (James) sterling job the writers have done – that laptops and mobiles aside, you can just about imagine the Connery Bonds following on from this.
Having filmed the books out of sequence (Bond meets Blofeld for the first time twice!), the Bond franchise has never been remotely fussed about “continuity” and rightly so – anyone who isn’t a theologian and bangs on about “canon” all the time should be shot out of a cannon! As far as the average punter is concerned, they all merge into each other anyway. And anything that pisses off humourless hardcore fans (Fanatics? Fannies?) is alright by me.
Martin Campbell has already hinted that Casino Royale is the first of a two-part story. Or could that be a trilogy? They’re all the rage these days, you know. As are prequels. And we’ve still to meet Q and Moneypenny for the “first” time. Indeed, Bond’s relationship with Vesper casts all that chaste flirting in an interesting light. And actually having some sort of continuity in the films for a change would mark another return to Fleming's novels.
So what is this “shadowy organisation” behind Le Chiffre? Could it be none other than… SPECTRE? This would make sense as SPECTRE was a conveniently apolitical (and less controversial) replacement for the SMERSH of the books. Looks like SPECTRE’s about to get an al Qaeda makeover. And with his Hitler lick, Mads Mikkelson is sweatily-impressive as this unusually troubled Fleming villain who weeps blood.
So what next? Can we expect more faithful remakes of the books? A SPECTRE trilogy with Blofeld alluded to in II and revealed, Emperor-like, in III a la You Only Live Twice? While Eon would never dare admit it, Casino Royale is as much a reaction to Austin Powers as Jason Bourne. I just hope this grittier approach to Bond doesn’t mean an end to megalomaniac villains and their quirky henchmen. They were an important part of the books too.
Wittily-written, well-cast, brilliantly directed, and the best credit sequence ever (out Maurice Binder-ing Maurice Binder, interestingly, it fetishises Bond himself – You Know My Name, indeed, Chris Cornell’s apt theme song being more in the pounding tradition of Live and Let Die than Gold-fing-gaaaaaaaaaah…!) Casino Royale hardly puts a poison-tipped shoe wrong. But nothing’s perfect and like a lot of films now, it was way too long – the set pieces seem to go on forever and they could have lost the Miami Airport sequence entirely. The Great Giancarlo Giannini’s Irving The Explainer bit during the card game got a bit tiresome after a while and I could have lived without Richard Branson’s leering cameo, however fleeting.
Wot, no gadgets? So why does Bond just happen to have a defibrillator of all things in his car? (Roger Moore I could have believed!) I loved the (intentionally?) hilarious scene where Bond staggered about after his drink was spiked – “Honeshtly, offisher, it washn’t the vodaka martinish. I’ve been poishoned. * hic *” (Maybe that’sh why Connery shpoke like that!) No wonder he rolled the Aston Martin.
And if this was Fleming’s Bond, where were the ciggies? So it’s alright to be a borderline alcoholic murdering psycho but not a smoker? Why it’s political correctness GONE MAD! Now there’s a title for a Bond film if ever I heard one…
* Actually, he doesn’t. Last time I looked that unrepentent site is still up and running. Which just goes to show that fanboys are incapable of changing their minds or ever admitting they were wrong or even just a bit hasty – their fan genes simply will not allow it. Talk about flying in the face of reality? What a bunch of Canutes!
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