Well here we are with Casino Royale and Purvis and Wade are still with us and uber-hack Martin Campbell is at the helm. And instead of making a better James Bond film the producers were determined to milk the success of the Bourne films and Batman Begins and entirely deconstruct the franchise. This is certainly not what the franchise needed. The James Bond franchise does not need tinkering. It certainly does not need rebooting. The formula is full-proof and has been for forty years. What it needed was better writers and directors (and it would also seem better producers). So what do you get when you take all the wit, charm, fun and character out of a Bond film? You get a fairly substandard and quite boring action film that could be Die Hard IV if you change the name of the main character.
Special thanks to “007”
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Everyone’s a critic:
The day before I went to see Casino Royale I had the glorious pleasure of watching The Purple Rose of Cairo. It is a wonderful film that beats from its very heart a love for the magic of cinema. It understands and celebrates the impact cinema magic can have on our lives if only for that brief period between lights down and lights up. Many of the previous Bond films, and especially the best ones, are deliver this magic. They were films that took us out of our world and brought us into the fantastical, exciting world of James Bond. They entertained us, they excited us, they made us laugh, and once in a while they made us cry. Casino Royale is as far away from these Bond films as you could imagine. It is a nasty, boring, pretentious piece of work that can only make the discerning viewer despair at the state of modern mainstream cinema.
Pretentious is a word I never thought I would associate with a Bond film but here it is. From the opening black and white (why?) scene in which Bond viciously kills a couple of thugs Casino Royale is pretentious nonsense. Bond films by their very nature are nonsense but they never took themselves seriously and that was what made them fun. Connery, Moore and Brosnan all had an innate ability to draw the audience in. They harkened back to the studio era when people went to see movies stars and the films played on that fact. Casino Royale takes itself completely seriously. It thinks it’s a profound, dramatic story. And this might have worked (it worked with OHMSS and the other Bond reboot film For Your Eyes Only) if the film wasn’t dead with lacklustre direction, bored performances and woeful writing.
After the very flawed (though still enjoyable) Die Another Day it was plain to anyone that the next Bond film needed two things. Firstly it had to get rid of Purvis and Wade whose poor scripts had to be constantly saved by Brosnan’s charm and natural lock-in with the character. There is no doubt that Brosnan’s films would have been a lot better had they had better writers. Secondly, and probably most importantly, they needed to bring in a strong director with knowledge of Bond’s cinema history and who can handle real spectacle. Lee Tamahori’s stylistics did not suit Bond well and the best action scenes were conceived and directed by Vic Armstrong.
Well here we are with Casino Royale and Purvis and Wade are still with us and uber-hack Martin Campbell is at the helm. And instead of making a better James Bond film the producers were determined to milk the success of the Bourne films and Batman Begins and entirely deconstruct the franchise. This is certainly not what the franchise needed. The James Bond franchise does not need tinkering. It certainly does not need rebooting. The formula is full-proof and has been for forty years. What it needed was better writers and directors (and it would also seem better producers). So what do you get when you take all the wit, charm, fun and character out of a Bond film? You get a fairly substandard and quite boring action film that could be Die Hard IV if you change the name of the main character.
Sadly we don’t even get to see why Bond became an agent or what made him stand out from the pack. Near the beginning of the film M says something to the extent that she made a mistake giving Bond his 00 status and I have to agree. Nothing in this film gives any evidence why anyone would think that this guy who is as subtle as a sledgehammer and sticks out like a sore thumb should be a 00 agent. James Bond in this film is a thug and an idiot. He is completely unrecognisable from anything that has gone before. The film is inconsistent, not just with previous Bond films, but with its own internal logic. When Bond needs to be he is superhuman, jumping from massive heights with no effect, swerving cars and switching knives with superhuman reflexes and when the film needs to be “serious” and “realistic” Bond gets his ass handed to him by a couple of thugs. At the end of the film Bond goes after one person in an excluded location. He shoots the guy not with a sniper rifle, not a with a silence pistol but with an automatic machine gun. What spy would be that stupid? Nobody does it better indeed! The Bond we know and love didn’t have to get down and dirty, he didn’t use brute force. He was the best and used his intelligence to always have the upper hand.
Book purists may hark on about Casino Royale being closer to the book, but remember this – at best the Bond books are B-grade pulp. They are far from literary classics. They are not Shakespeare or Dickens. They’re not even in the same ballpark as Hammett and Chandler. The reason James Bond exists to this day is not because of Fleming but because of Cubby Broccoli and Sean Connery, Roger Moore and all the other creative talents behind the cinematic Bond. They created the character that is beloved today and the Bond every successor must be compared to. If not for the films the books would have been forgotten a long time ago.
Even if the book’s plot doesn’t allow it Casino Royale wants to be dramatic, powerful, even moving. It fails on all accounts. It is as dramatically inert a film that I have seen in quite some time. The film’s main hope of drama is the relationship between Bond and Vesper. Unfortunately Vesper isn’t introduced until an hour into the film and is then sidelined for an extended poker scene lasting about twice as long more than it should. Where is the character? Where is the chemistry? Where is the connection? It’s nowhere and the script (with romance lines that would make George Lucas chuckle) and lacklustre direction are at fault. Just because you substitute spectacle and puns for a poker game does not make your film more serious. At times Eva Green does ignite a small spark of fire and charm with her sour co-star but it is too little to get you emotionally involved with their characters.
Daniel Craig spends 90% of the film staring blankly into space with a frown and pursed lips. That’s serious acting, apparently. Never once did I think I was watching James Bond. He voice is very monotone and indistinct and can’t carry emotion unless it’s angry (“Do I look like I give a d**n?!”). His drama scenes are boring and lifeless. When in action I was constantly reminded of Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard, which with all due respect to Kevin is not his finest hour. I can’t blame Craig entirely. He is miscast and he’s only an actor doing his job. The majority of the blame must be placed on the direction and poor characterisation. I also can’t be the only one who is well past bored by Judi Dench’s miserable, annoying presence in these films. Every time she appears on screen it seems her job is to suck the fun out of the films. Even in the Brosnan films he was terrible. The one cast member that should have been booted out remains. By far the best part of the film is Giancarlo Giannini who brings class and nuance to the film in a thankless role as Captain Poker Rules Exposition.
The action scenes are incoherent, poorly staged and quite unfeasible (which again wouldn’t be a problem if the film didn’t take itself so seriously). The opening chase scene is ludicrous with Bond and his targets bouncing around like wushu masters. When did Bond become Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? Campbell then shamelessly stages a virtually shot-by-shot remake of the Raiders of the Lost Ark truck chase at an airport. Apart from establishing, swooping camera-shots, Campbell shoots everything in hand-held close up giving no sense of scope or geography to his action scenes. Shot of Bond punching someone, cut to someone punching Bond. It’s all a mess.
Special thanks to “007”
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