Casino Royale, 2006. Directed by Martin Campbell, written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and the ubiquitous Paul Haggis. Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Giancaro Giannini, Jeffrey Wright, Isaach De Bankole, and Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, who seems obliged to poke his ugly mug into all the big-budget movies.
There’s a moment in the opening of Casino Royale, when our hero, James Bond, is shown dispatching his very first victim in the sink of a public lavatory. Shot in black and white, the blacks as rich as India ink and the whites as glaring as a flash bulb, the scene is notable for its wretchedness, and an early signal that this isn’t Pierce Brosnan’s world anymore. Apparently, a double-0 agent must waste two enemies before reaching such exalted status. The aforementioned kill is shown in flashback, and now our hero, played by Daniel Craig, sits patiently in the office of his next victim, who assures him that the second kill is easier. Actually, he tries to assure Bond, but is blown through his chair by a single bullet before he can finish that sentence.
Of course, if Martin Campbell had any wit about him, this opening scene wouldn’t have been in monochrome, but in the sun-drenched technicolor of the 60s, taking us back to the real beginning. But no one has ever accused a Bond film of excessive imagination.
Casino Royale is supposedly a return to the old-style Bond, the “literate” Bond from Ian Fleming’s potboilers. As it stands, it is not a stretch to say it’s the best Bond in ages, though context is everything: there has literally not been a decent bond since Sean Connery flexed his golden torso in Thunderball, which itself was nothing but fluff. But the comparisons should end there, for Connery’s Bond was at least a product of its time, its politics somewhat reassuring to the zeitgeist of the 60s. The new Bond seems content to give us creaky imperialism, the usual idiotic women, gadgets that, in this world, now seem like nothing any third world country with a few bucks doesn’t own. Worse, Casino Royale has an overlong plot, ham-handed direction, and makes the especially tragic mistake of being, quite simply, in its second half, the most dull big-budget film of the year.
After the hideous credit sequence has run its course, we open with the usual gangbusters: Bond is sweating away his afternoon in some tropical locale, this time Uganda, watching a mongoose and a cobra fight to the death while a fire-scarred villain waits for his opportunity to make some shady deal. Soon, their cover is blown, and Bond races after the bad guy in a spectacular chase through a construction area… killing scores of innocent Ugandans, whose lives, considering their lack of close up, seem to be less worthwhile than the mongoose or snake. The bad guy is an amazing creature, possessed of the dexterity of a flying squirrel and Jackie Chan, leaping and pirouetting off girders, elevators, cranes, you name it. Finally, Bond chases him down, waltzes into an Embassy (from who knows where), shoots the villain down and razes the building.
What justifies such wanton behavior on the part of the British government? Apparently, this Scarface was a terrorist, which is enough for us. The new Bond tosses the ‘t’ word around with more aplomb than the Republicans before election day. Who the hell is this Ugandan guy? Instead of the story of a man who undoubtedly grew up living in abject poverty, who turned into a terrorist and somehow managed to morph into this gravity-defying creature, we get… James Bond. And how he learned to love martinis and lose his soul.
The story is the usual silliness: an uber-villain named Le Chiffre, who weeps blood, makes tons of money by arming the world’s terrorists. Somehow, it is suggested, he made a figurative killing off 9/11, apparently by unloading boxcutters at a low rate. Anyway, Le Chiffre’s latest plot was thwarted by Bond, in a chase scene whose best moments were stolen from The Road Warrior. Having lost his shirt, Le Chiffre must win back his money in a high-stakes Texas Hold ‘Em tournament in Montenegro. Bond is the best card player, so naturally he’s called upon to prevail. Along the way he meets the supposedly intelligent though regally daft Vesper Lynd, played by a beautiful woman named Eva Green, who is slathered under some of the worst makeup since Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? Worse, Green is an actress with the range of a sock puppet, draining what little life there is from this film in every scene. Eventually, Bond beats Le Chiffre, is abducted and has his testicles whacked (literally), and finds a traitor in his midst.
The film is being called ‘dark’, in that Craig’s Bond can be seen brooding, is testy, then falls in love with Ms. Lynd, and has a supposedly grim ending that references Titanic, of all films. Of course, a decent filmmaker can use lighting and camera angles, set design and editing to suggest despair, so it’s difficult to feel the angst in a film so harshly lit and pedantically shot. The film takes its sweet time going anywhere, and then just when you begin to get bored, screenwriter Paul Haggis steps in to pour syrup on the audience. Bond falls in love, Bond loses girl, Bond becomes jaded. Two and a half hours later the film comes to a close, and you wander out stunned, wondering just when you’ll stop being fooled by the hype and watch something original for a change.
Earnestness is the raison d’etre of Casino Royale, which is a real shame, because there’s so much you could do to tweak this ridiculous scenario–from Britain’s always failed attempts at outdoing its American counterparts on the foreign policy front, to the fact that nowadays your average teenage hacker has better gadgets than Bond and Company. Not to mention the fact that maybe they could give Bond a woman who is a real foil. Perhaps a lesbian. Or perhaps Bond could be black.
God forbid this franchise should acknowledge the 21st century.
The old Bonds reassured us and gave us some needed confidence during a cold war that had everyone on the edge. We often forget that the first three Bonds were testaments to ingenuity–they were big moneymakers made on virtually no budget whatsoever. From Russia With Love could be considered the most literate, and even it had a sense of camp that was evident in its day. We can look now at the dopey blondes and brunettes that hung on Connery’s every smirk, but what do these silly women and their swinging bustline do for us today? Vesper Lynd isn’t fun or funny, and her barbs lack bite (and she certainly isn’t brainy). Above all, why should we give a rat’s ass about James Bond, about his development as a killer and a man, his learning not to trust people, or even about his dispatching villains, most of whom are from third-world countries? If Uganda’s the worst you can throw at us, you might as well resurrect S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
Judging from its box-office take last weekend, this series will be around for a long time, the machine pumping out these witless packages every two years. But if it’s nostalgia you want, rent the originals. If it’s action you want… I guess you could still rent the originals. See Casino Royale if you’re a Bond addict, if your DVD player is broken, or you’re stuck in a small town and it’s a choice between this and, say, Happy Feet. Or read the book. Your own imagination can certainly do no worse.
