I was 11 when I saw my first Bond film, The Spy Who Love Me, and I saw it in a theater. After that I watched whenever they were on TV (this was long before TNT's Bond marathons every 6 months) and read all of Ian Fleming's books. Of course the books were better than the films and of course the early Connery films were the best of the films. I think Connery was the best Bond, but he had the advantage of having the best scripts. Films that had stories and not just stunts. Stories that were fun and not crazy and only pushed the bounds of reality, but did not completely defy all forms of physics. I have seen the all the films, but I found invisible cars pretty stupid.
Sunday night I saw the newest Bond film, Casino Royale, and it's the best Bond film in a long long time. Casino Royale was the first Bond book Fleming wrote and the producers used it as an opportunity to reinvent the character. The opening segment shows his first 00 mission. Next we get an inspired foot chase scene in Madagascar mostly through a construction site. We don't know much about that villain but he's played by Sebastien Foucan a real life master of the sport of Parkour and free running which involves running through urban obstacles in artistic ways. It makes for a good action scene but we also see a Bond who sometimes literally runs through walls but at other times out thinks his opponent and takes short cuts to catch up. The whole movie offers such contrasts. M describes him as a blunt instrument and everyone constantly describes how he has to overcome his ego. For the first time in a Bond film, James Bond has a character arc...and it works.
He tracks a few people and then we get to the main plot. Le Chiffre is a terrorist financeer who has lost money and plans to get it back in a high stakes poker game. Bond is the best poker player in MI6. He's supposed to make sure Le Chiffre loses so that he'll need to turn to MI6 for protection so they can get him to tell secrets. It's a plan that makes some sense vs just killing him. In the book they played Baccaratt, now it's Texas Hold 'Em, that's a fine modernization.
Bond's bankroll comes from Her Majesty's Treasury and because it's a Bond story, the agent sent to look out for the money is the beautiful Vesper Lynd (Eva Green). Unlike many other films, she's actually intelligent and she and Bond verbally spar. He doesn't just sleep with her, he falls for her.
Casino Royale was directed by Martin Campbell who also directed Goldeneye, one of the better Bond films of the last 15 years. The two main writers also wrote Die Another Day and The World Is Not Enough, two of the dumber films. But this time they were helped out by Paul Haggis of Crash and Million Dollar Baby fame and that clearly helped. The end was a little drawn out and it seemed like every lead came from a cell phone but otherwise I was pretty impressed.
I haven't mentioned Daniel Craig yet, the newest Bond. A lot was made of the fact that he's blond, that's of course superficial and irrelevant. In fact I think he's perhaps the best Bond, but we'll have to wait a movie or two to find out. He's clearly the most athletic and comes across as very powerful and masculine. He runs a lot in this film and I found him very remincient of Robert Patrick as the T-1000. Connery was more sophisticated but since this was an origin story, that's specifically not in Bond's character yet. In the next film we'll see if he picks up some of that. In the various fights, this Bond gets hurt and while the scraps and cuts do take a scene or two to heal, they do have an emotional effect on him and you see bond's character forming from these early events in his career. A lot of this happens because of Craig.
I of course like Dame Judi Dench as M but I was bothered by the setting of every one of her scenes. We never used to see M's home or (I assume) M's spouse and Bernard Lee never travelled to the Caribbean.
Much of the formula is followed. Bond travels to Prague, Madagascar, London, the Bahamas, Miami, Montenegro, Lake Como (Italy), and Venice. There are fights, stunts, beautiful women, and (only a few) quips. The opening didn't follow the formula, but since this is an origin story, perhaps that's ok. The song sucked and I still can't decide if I liked the credits. They seemed like a cross between an iPod commercial and 60s animation. Again, quite different from the forumla.
I can't think of too many other films where I critique the credits, a Bond film has a lot to live up to. As I said, I haven't been too happy with the franchise for a long time, but I enjoyed Casino Royale a lot. I hope it does well and I hope the producers listen to the critics and continue this trend for the next one.
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