Casino Royale

[rating:4]
Director: Martin Campbell
Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini

“Casino Royale” — call it the Secret Origin of James Bond — is without a doubt one of the best films in the long series. It makes a number of nods to the overall James Bond mythos — a ’64 Aston Martin is prominent, for instance, and at a grim moment there’s a riff on his standard martini preference — but is clearly its own creature, on a mission to add humanity and weight by putting the adventure, glamour and violence of Bond into the more realistic context Ian Fleming brought to the novels back in the ’50s, but which the films has rarely conveyed.

The big question, whenever a new actor picks up the Walther PPK and gets fitted for the tux, is how well he carries the mantel, and what kind of Bond he’s going to be. Bond has evolved from Sean Connery’s suave tough guy into something of a cartoon. New Bond Daniel Craig plays Bond just as he should be — the deadliest man alive.

It’s not just any tale of James Bond, superspy — it’s the story of how a British agent, newly elevated to elite Double-O status (licensed to kill), goes from being just a spy and assassin to being the consummate cool “Bond, James Bond.” With that brief, director Martin Campbell (who did 1995’s “Goldeneye” with Pierce Brosnan) gives us a more human Bond. When this Bond commits his first kill, it’s violent, ugly, and you can see he’s shaken by it, behind his thin veneer of reserve.

Under the surface tale of intrigue, the film portrays the creation of a noble man who is also a remorseless killer, and it does wonders for the context of Bond. Critics have rolled their eyes at the near-predatory womanizing that is a Bond signature, but in this film, Craig’s Bond reminds us that he doesn’t expect to live very long as a Double-O, and suddenly that supreme confidence and willingness to take whatever pleasure life can offer makes sense in a new way. It’s not just retrograde lionizing of alpha-male behavior for beta-male consumption. It’s a believable reaction to the life-and-death world Bond inhabits.

So “Casino Royale” is not an entirely fun film, because it is not without consequence. Bond is a hero, and he kills with cause, but the deaths have weight, they have effects. When a bloody-knuckled Bond consoles a woman horrified by seeing him in action, it’s very far removed from the “sharks with lasers” kind of movie spoofed by the “Austin Powers” series. Connery’s films may have been edgy and violent for their time, but they’re tame to today’s viewer, and Roger Moore’s films were weightless fun — think “Octopussy,” for instance: One of Moore’s best, but clearly not set in the same world as “The Bourne Identity” or John LeCarre.

That’s what makes it the perfect film for this point in the series. Connery established the coolness of Bond as, to quote Raymond Chandler, “what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets.” Roger Moore’s tenure degenerated (or rose, depending on who you ask) to high parody. You weren’t seeing that fantasy figure personified, you were seeing a lighthearted approximation. Timothy Dalton’s underrated take on the character stripped down the over-the-top lunacy for simpler, meaner flicks with more of a brutal edge. Pierce Brosnan brought back the glamour and fun of Moore and Connery without losing Connery’s real swagger. But Brosnan’s films could still creak a little under macho banter and one-liners that were often dated and cringe-inducing, and the enormous set pieces, while brilliant bits of special effects and stunts, lost any touch with reality.

Some will say, well, James Bond is all about the big set pieces and unbelievable machismo, it’s not supposed to be realistic. While the movie series evolved that way, the novels were very gritty and down-to-earth. Fleming’s Bond once lost his lunch after a nasty bit of violence, and he didn’t have lasers in his wristwatch. In an age in which CGI makes anything possible, it was wise to get out of the game of special-effects oneupsmanship and rediscover Bond as a character.

Which is not to say the action isn’t there. The film skips the giant set piece that usually precedes the stylized (and particularly lame, this time) opening credits for a much more intimate, brutal — and black-and-white — scene that establishes our new Bond more intimately. But after the titles, we get arguably the best action scene in the history of the franchise — and the only time I’ve seen a specific stuntman’s work credited in the opening titles, which in this case is richly deserved. Bond chases a fugitive through a third-world city and across a construction site. Rising to the series’ tradition of real stunts that are just jaw-dropping, the stuntman fugitive, Craig and Craig’s stuntmen … run. They run up walls, they leap off cranes, they do acrobatic stuff that makes Spider-Man look awkward. It’s amazing physical work marvelously showcased by Campbell, and will be as memorable as any sequence you’ve ever seen in a Bond film.

Another high point: Torture. In this day and age, that word has more viscerally unpleasant political meaning than ever, and this time the almost mandatory scene of Bond being tormented by the bad guy is brutal, dehumanizing and pointless — and thus more powerful.

“Casino Royale” is not without its drawbacks, however. The storytelling is occasionally muddled, and the film’s unwillingness to explain what’s going on much of the time contrasts with inelegant exposition during the casino scenes, when one sidelined character remarks to the other about poker “tells” and how much money is at stake, strictly to spoon-feed an audience that has been left remarkably to its own wits until that point. A different angle on clear storytelling is the murky resolution. When the film is over, we’re not sure entirely why certain supporting characters acted the way they did. One character dies and we’re left to wonder whether it was a heroic or villainous demise. For some, that ambiguity will be enjoyable, but for others merely frustrating.

A key flaw: The love story that is absolutely vital to Craig’s final evolution into the true .007 is not entirely convincing. It doesn’t unfold in a natural, believable way and we can see the filmmakers straining to sell it at the last minute so that the final scenes will have the needed emotional punch, and they don’t quite succeed.

The villain is flat, getting almost no dialogue and getting by on steely glares across a poker table. He’s a Dick Tracy grotesque, as so many Bond villains are, but he’s not vivid and memorable. And while he was a KGB agent in the 1953 novel, here he’s … a banker specializing in terrorist and insurgent groups. Or something.

The treatment of women is improved, too. While Bond’s first seduction in the film is as supermodel-perfect as any in the series, the scene is more about establishing Bond’s character than about titillation.
Craig’s main flame is Eva Green, whose Vesper Lind is as real and compelling as anyone going back to Diana Rigg in the vastly underrated “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” from 1969. Green comes across as more real and rounded than most — call her the Bond Girl Next Door. She puts on the requisite glamour when needed, but also comes across as more than a prop, which is vital to her role in the film.

Judi Dench is in top form as M, Bond’s boss. Her relationship with Bond alternates between a cold-hearted bureaucrat who may even fear the cold-blooded killers in her employ and a sort of maternal concern, a humanity one can’t imagine Bernard Lee having brought during his many years as M to Connery and Moore. Another highlight — sure to ruin the film for some diehards — is Q. He’s not in the film. The movie is completely free of the gadgetry that culminated with Brosnan’s car actually turning invisible. This time, the key gadget of spycraft is the cell phone, and the film is the better for it.
“Casino Royale” drags in a few places, and a film where the main plot revolves around playing poker (dumbed down from the novel’s baccarat) runs a risk of tedium, but it delivers a couple instances of amazing action, and incredible intensity throughout, with Craig being given a chance to play the most compelling version of Bond ever typed into a screenplay.

Tags: action, daniel craig, drama, james bond, spies