Casino Royale
Review by Todd Hertz | posted 11/17/2006
 1 of 4
Let's get right to it: Daniel Craig is good. Daniel Craig is Bond.
So how does he compare to Connery, Moore, Brosnan, and the others? Tricky question—but not just because we've only seen one movie with Craig, Daniel Craig. Instead, the comparison is flawed because Craig isn't really playing the same Bond. This is a new Bond for a new time. And for that guy, Craig fits like a tailored tuxedo.
Successful long-running characters survive because they adapt to new times, changing audiences, and the popular styles of storytelling. For instance, observing the gradual changes in the Batman and James Bond franchises show how these heroes bent and flexed through various decades of camp, darkness, and far-fetched goofiness. When both guys were last seen, their stories had been watered down to showcase big budget, overblown action set pieces.
Daniel Craig is the new James Bond
Now in the mid-'00s, we have a wholly new Bat and Bond. They've both stripped down to the basics, grown more gritty and serious, and brought in personal drama. Perhaps it's because we're in a more sober, less black-and-white era after 9/11. Perhaps it's because audiences have grown tired of heartless and systematic adventure. Or maybe it's because complicated TV serials (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, and Lost) and films with three-dimensional heroes (Spider-Man 1 & 2) have shown you can tell exciting stories with real drama, realism and character.
Batman Begins went back to the start to explain why Bruce Wayne needs to dress up like a big bat and how he got all his body armor. Casino Royale starts the adventure all over to explain how James Bond got his license to kill and why he needs emotional armor.
The movie begins, pre-credits, with a fantastic black-and-white film noir sequence of Bond meeting the requirements to reach double-oh status. Bond goes straight to work to track down whoever is financing worldwide terrorists. After creating a small international crisis, harassing his beleaguered boss M (Judi Dench) and doing his own rogue investigation, Bond must go against card shark and terrorism banker Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) in a high stakes game of poker that could ruin Le Chiffre—if Bond can win.
Bond, a tux, and some high stakes poker
From there, the movie twists and turns through espionage, crossings and double-crossings that gets too convoluted and goes on for about 20 minutes too long. But it's excusable because Casino Royale gives us so much that the Bond franchise has longed for: credibility, actual human drama, maturity, intensity and great unpredicted surprises.
This is the first Bond film in a while to be based on an original Ian Fleming novel—and you can tell the difference. It feels so good to be back on Fleming territory. The film has a gravitas and intrigue missing from recent outings. Part of the credit also belongs to the filmmakers for finally taking the chance of doing a Bond film without the tried-but-true formula.
Almost all of the paint-by-number Bondisms that have been parodied and copied by spies Austin Powers, XXX and Alex Rider are gone. And it's such a relief. As is the film's ability to draw a good balance between exorcising tired concepts—and keeping a definitive Bondness. The smirking and self-referential quipping is gone. But the movie is still fun and often laugh-out-loud funny. The film isn't action-centered, loud and explosion-focused. But there are still three incredibly exciting and impressively executed action sequences that—surprisingly in a day where we've seen it all—offer some action bits we've never quite seen before.
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