The thing that makes this film dumb is that it’s set in present day and Judi Dench once again stars as M, yet it follows Bond from his early days as he learns how to be 007. So essentially, the filmmakers are jettisoning the old Bond and recreating a new Bond so that they can…
Now, in “Casino Royale,” the thuggish-looking British actor Daniel Craig (the blond Mossad agent in Steven Spielberg’s “Munich”) plays Bond as a humorless brute with a flat, classless Estuary English accent, and the critics (other than this one) are going wild. Bond is supposed to be tall, dark, and handsome, but Craig is none of…
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…
Ratings for the new James Bond: Casino Royale are through the roof. Every review site on the internet is hailing it as the best Bond movie yet. I love James Bond, but I HATED Casino Royale. And another thing, Daniel Craig does not look the part of a smooth super-spy. Throughout the entire movie, that…
Well, I finally saw Casino Royale last night, and came away thinking my colleague, Cosmo (Landesman) got it absolutely right in his review: “The film aims to be a character-driven study of how 007 was changed by this mission and meeting Vesper. But as far as I can tell, it’s the story of how a…
Now comes Daniel Craig, a casting decision that was at first raked over the coals and is now nearly universally praised. Is he the Bond we’ve been waiting for? Yes and no. Given the confines of the script, Craig plays the role with pitch perfect precision — temperamental, stubborn, crazed and dangerous. The producers, though,…
Yet another *sigh* underachieving screenplay and mediocre direction, overly long, boring and unsatisfying Gee, what a disappointment. I was thrilled to watch this one approach release and even more thrilled to see the almost universal critical acclaim that Casino Royale ’06 garnered. I guess I should have stayed home. No. I m glad I made…
In “Casino Royale,” James Bond’s boss, M, played by Dame Judi Dench, excoriates him for botching a job, snapping, “Any thug can kill people.” And any thug can be a witless boozer. Author Ian Fleming’s suave British secret agent has turned into a muscled killer in this new movie. Played by Daniel Craig, he’s ill-suited…
The important thing to remember is this: James Bond was not a lithe, “pantherlike” superhero. He was, in the words of Anthony Burgess, a “globetrotting clubman,” who looked more comfortable at a dinner table than in a gym. In just about every novel Fleming took pains to emphasize this fact, juxtaposing him with a variety…
I suppose I better get this out of the way first: I wasn’t as enamored with this Bond entry as many others that I have spoken to about it. I even had one friend say “Daniel Craig is better than Connery!” — please. I suppose his muscle-bound physique, and the ludicrous plot details, match perfectly…
