Movie Review: Casino Royale

So I think Margie and I were among the last two people on Earth who wanted to see CR while in the theaters — at least based on the very scanty attendance in the theater last night. Of course, it’s been out since Thanksgiving, so it’s not like it’s a disappointing opening weekend or something …

No real spoilers below … but if you haven’t seen it and think you’re going to soon … go ahead and skip this post.

Casino Royale (2006)

Overall		Story
Production		Acting

This is no Citizen Kane, but CR is one of the best Bond movies of the franchise — and, probably, the best movie that’s been labeled a Bond move since the original Doctor No.

Story: Bond movies are usually about The Bad Guy and His Plot and How James Foils Them and Gets the Girl. This film, instead, is about how James Bond went from being a cocky, arrogant SOB to being the suave assassin we know him as (and finally catch a glimpse of at the very end) — and, more importantly, what that transformation cost him.

As such, it almost accrues more credit than it deserves. It’s not a terribly original idea (even within the Bond corpus — it’s been touched on briefly over the past several films, esp. in Goldeneye), but it’s driven home well here. Indeed, that final scene creates an initial rush of applause (“He’s back!”) followed by a discomfort of what deeds and loss lie behind that debonair grin.

Something that makes all this work is that Bond is not (yet) an invincible superman. Physically he’s superb, yes, but he can be hurt (tortured, even), and he gets some marvelous somewhat-persistent facial scrapes and bloodied knuckes over the course of the film. By the same note, though clearly clever as all get out and aware of it, he’s more than capable of making mistakes and underestimating others, usually with punishing consequences.

The novel, as I recall, was about both violence and suspense — brutality and danger behind the sights of a gun and across a baccarat (sigh) table — but not so much about high-paced action scenes. Those do exist in the movie — but not nearly as much as one would expect from a Bond flick (especially after the first marvelous chase scene); that and the near-climactic battle in Venice are the closest the movie comes to being another Big Budget Bond Action Film, and … it was (since they were done so well) enough. Nicely
played.

The movie itself is long (the longest of any Bond flick), and goes through a maze of wheels within wheels — indeed, there were multiple moments where it seemed the movie was going to end at any moment (“X is dealt with – roll credits!”), though the ultimate ending successfully wraps things up. There are some moments, at the Casino itself, where there are some odd jumps in time and contnuity, and the movie has both prolonged, tight action and long leaps of time, and on occasion that feels a bit jarring.

While wandering a bit afield of the original novel, a number of elements from that (including the torture scene) are there. The book was less interested in dealing with the “creation” of Bond than in his introduction as a hard-living (to the point of destruction) not very nice guy who happens to be on Our Side.

There’s all sorts of references to the past, including commentary on martinis, a revisit to the famous 1964 Aston Martin model of Goldfinger and Thunderball, and, of course, yet another Felix Leiter for folks to enjoy. These get a bit of trivia squirming goodness — but don’t distract from the movie itself.

Production: The production values of the film are excellent. The location work is marvelous (with Prague doubling for most of Eastern Europe, including Montenegro). The initial Parkour chase scene in Africa is marvelously choreographed and executed. The car chase … is excellently executed (and marvelously unexpected in that execution),

The make-up and costuming were nicely done.The fight scenes are bloody and brutal and every bit as nasty as they should be. Things are generally polished when they should be, rough-edged when not.

While I was disappointed in David Arnold’s “Shaken & Stirred” music project, he does a good job with the music composition here. The main title is a bit shrieky-man-rock for my taste, but Arnold does a nice job of incorporating it into the rest of the soundtrack. The music doesn’t rise to John Barry’s level, of course, but it’s better than a lot of other non-Barry hands have done.

I’ve heard a few complaints about the main titles, but I thought they were nicely done, visually interesting (at least initially), in keeping with the “casino” theme, and a reasonable representation for the movie. While the sequencing on the Bond theme and the down-the-gunbarrel stuff was non-standard, it was there, which was a good thing.

The only caveat I would have to the production is that the waters of Venice are not known for their clarity, especially in the presence of a lot of fast-moving masonry. Well, I’d add the caveat that the Sony product placement (courtesy of Sony Pictures, cough) got a bit much at times.

Acting: Okay, Daniel Craig has secured himself in the Bond canon. He brings the boyish charm of Brosnan, the rough wit of Connery, the brutality of Dalton, and even a bit of (as Margie noted) Harrison Ford “Indy” humanity to the role. I’m not prepared yet to say he’s best, but he’s tackled the character in ways that nobody else has had the opportunity to, and has done it well.

Once you get past Craig (and the always-marvelous Judi Dench), the cast becomes a lot less solid. Bad guys are bad guys, and I was actually a scosh disappointed in Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre who couldn’t decide if he was going to be steely, whiny, or just marvelously made up. Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd was competent — she shone in the middle (during and after the stairwell fight), but outside of that she was interchangable with any number of Bond girls.

The rest of the supporting cast is good enough, speaking or not — most notably, though, the other non-thug bad guys all have their own distinguishing appearance and reality and presence (even if it’s just standing/sitting there), which makes the overall production seem richer. However, there’s such a plethora of additional criminal masterminds and various mooks that I did have trouble keeping track of them.

Overall: Me like. Going into the DVD pre-order queue. I can definitely see watching this again in the future (and, heck, wouldn’t take much argument to get me to see it in a theater again).

It’s not the most fabulous film of all time, by any means — but it is a significantly richer and deeper film than most of the ones in the franchise. Some folks might not like that, but I think the movie-going public is ready for the evolution. My biggest question is, now that they’ve mined this particular vein, how will they make the next film as interesting as this one?

(Amusing note: ran into this problem again today … I did an internal blog search on “Casino Royale,” but couldn’t get to any of the links because … wait for it … the URL (with the search conditions) of the originating (search results) page had the “c” word in it, and so was seen as a spam site …)