I’m freshly back from my first viewing of the latest outing for James Bond, Casino Royale. I say my first outing as I’m off to see it with a different group of people tomorrow.
First off, this movie is going to make a ton of money. I’m not saying that because the film is good, although it is, but we went to see it at three in the afternoon and there was a queue to collect booked tickets, a line of hopefuls and people booking for the next screening which was three hours later, that was at 3pm, imagine what it was like at 6 or 7! This was at Harbour Lights, the small art-house cinema in Southampton, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it like that, the only time I’ve ever booked tickets there was for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (in fact, that was the reason I became a member, but it was well worth it, definitely recommended, I renewed recently).
My friends and I changed cinemas and managed to get a screening an hour-and-a-half later, sit where you like (which is unusual in the UK for screenings of big films), so we were in our seats 15 minutes before it started. Which turned out to be nearly 45 minutes before the film actually got underway, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that many adverts. One gripe about the adverts, aside from their length, was that it featured both an anti-piracy campaign and an advert by a company who obviously supplied a lot of products for the film (mentioning no names) so we ended up seeing a lot of it before it even started. Cinema-owners, STOP DOING THAT, it’s stupid and annoying.
Anyway, so, on to the film. First off, was it good? Yes (I’m adding a caveat to this, subject to a second viewing, Episode 2 was good on the first viewing but was dreadful on repeat viewings). Was Daniel Craig good? Yes. I’ll try not to discuss story points or provide too many spoilers (skip the section between the * marks). Let’s start by looking at the checklist I laid out in one of my previous posts:
exotic locations, check; beautiful women, check; femme fatal with a suggestive name, check; villain with physical or mental problem, check; tons of gadgets, check; casino scene, check; DB5, check; tuxedo, check; flashy car, check.
Well, it certainly has the exotic locations, the beautiful women are there too, no femme fatal or suggestive names, which was nice, the villain does have a physical ailment, there are still a good selection of gadgets, obviously a casino scene, which means a tuxedo, yes the have squeezed a DB5 in, and finally a flashy Aston Martin makes an appearance (albeit brief). It’s definitely a Bond film.
Moving on to the bad, because the film certainly wasn’t perfect. Starting at the beginning, the theme and title sequence were dire, absolutely the worst of both (although Cheryl Crow’s offering may edge it). The theme is a forgettable pop song, they need to get some divas and an orchestra back in there. It’s a big film, it needs a big theme tune. The title sequence was all computer graphics and animation, no flamboyance or gyrating bodies, Die Another Die didn’t do too bad, this was more TV show.
Then there’s the the reappearance of the DB5, which took some creative writing to shoe-horn in. No, no, no, no, NO. It may be seen as nostalgic, but it’s time to move on, dump it, all it does it call attention to itself and ruin the suspension of disbelief. I’m not sure what the feeling is here that keeps forcing them to put it back in, some misguided notion it is inextricably linked to Bond, or contains his identity perhaps? Small things like a vodka martini or saying “The name’s Bond, James Bond,” can be worked into the script well enough, and obviously a tuxedo which, for me, is the visual signature for James Bond. So I don’t want to see the DB5 in a Bond film again, ever, consign it to history.
That annoyance was overshadowed (mainly because it only appears briefly) however, but the blatant product placement. It was getting bad in more recent films, but this was pushing it. The products were the ones shown in the advert before the film and appeared practically every five minutes, so blatantly I was completely ripped from the narrative. It’s not like these films don’t make enough money to cover the costs, they make a ton of money, so the film-makers do not need to sell it all out for a few more million in placement revenue. DON’T DO IT.
Lastly was the villain, he just wasn’t mean enough. *******SPOILER ALERT****** I thought he was going to be when the story fools us into thinking it’s all over and about to be wrapped up with a nice, clean happy ending and then switches up a gear, but no, the bad guy gets killed by someone he’s working with, the sort of villain Bond faces should be the one doing killing, not getting killed. ********END SPOILER******
The good comes in spades though, the Bond girls come with some brains and little in the way of dumb lines, stupid costumes or daft names for a start. They’ve got sex appeal and aren’t simply there to act as damsels to be saved, more to provide some emotional undercurrent or show Bond’s detachment.
No Q. I almost put this in the bad points section. John Cleese I can do without as Q, it doesn’t bother me so much to lose him, if it was Desmond Llewelyn, then I would complain, but while Bond’s gadget count doesn’t really lessen, it does take a back seat, which is certainly no bad thing, they were starting to take over.
It’s action-packed, but with some nice gritty violence rather than the one punch Brosnan seemed to get away with. Craig really has to grapple and struggle, picking up knocks along the way (which all magically vanish), destroying scenery and props like nobody’s business, it’s nice to see Bond getting his hands dirty again. That’s not to say it’s all action, all business, no, there’s a nice balance between action, story, character development and a smattering of fun. A good mix all-in-all.
Last, but by far the most important, Bond is much closer to right. Brosnan was good, but lacked edge, Craig brings that back in spades. He switches effortlessly between steely, cold killer, a man like a knife blade, to emotional and romantic, to flirty and playful in much the same way Connery did. He’s the sort of character you believe could cold-heartedly kill someone without a second thought and then charm a woman into bed. He has a big, bold, confident presence on screen and a strut that screams come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough
. At the same time there is a vulnerability, he does nearly die, he does make mistakes, but he’s also the smart Bond, the one who can work things out without a map marking the secret hideout. Yes, he’ll do, he’ll do indeed (they were right to sign him up for another, I’d get commitments on a couple more if I was them).
I was excited to see the film and so many films I’ve got excited about recently have been a let-down, Casino Royale certainly wasn’t that. The producers got it right this time and they were right to sign these guys up for another. It was by far the best action film I’ve seen so far this year (in a long time in fact) and it’s raised the bar, showing just how bad the likes of Mission: Impossible III really was and the way those sort of films need to go. Roll on Bond 22, because cinema’s only super-agent is back.
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