fludd.org - Movie Review

The movie Casino Royale is certainly to the James Bond series what Batman Begins is to the Batman series. Both of these movies (or should I say prequels) re-launched their respective leading character into the sky. Of course, the movie Die Another Day received mixed feelings worldwide (particularly in South Korea). As a matter of fact, many people had the feeling – and with reason – that the James Bond series was being perverted to death. With a difference that most of us are not used to see and a new actor playing James Bond, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli succeeded into bringing us back to the sources that made the real James Bond.

Before James Bond became a cinematographic franchise, it was a series of novel written by Ian Fleming. However, since Casino Royale is an adaptation of Fleming’s first novel, scriptwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (Die Another Day) along with Canadian moviemaker Paul Haggis (Crash) had to throw James Bond into the context of the post-9/11 era. After all, the Cold War (1945-1991) is over since 16 years and gone is the time when you saw Sean Connery or Roger Moore, for instance, fighting Russian communists while playing James Bond.

As a result of such a marvellous work, Casino Royale is definitely the best movie of this franchise. With this return to the sources for James Bond, viewers get the chance to see something new (for those who never saw the “old” James Bond movies or who never read the novels). As opposed to what you saw in the James Bond movies starring Pierce Brosnan, the script in this film is much darker (in terms of tone) than most of its predecessors and more realistic than – let’s say – Die Another Day.

While Die Another Day was almost a cinematographic joke, because of its Americanized content, Casino Royale brings James Bond back to his British origin. With its dark tone, Casino Royale might certainly look bland for most of you. However, the beauty of this movie lies in what the characters psychologically conceal if you look at the expression of their eyes (or should I say their poker face). Such attention (from the three scriptwriters) were put on the characters, because Casino Royale, as opposed to Die Another Day, doesn’t put the emphasis on entertainment.

In fact, this movie, as a prequel, does what most of us want: witnessing the first steps of James Bond in the world of international espionage. As you will see (or saw) in this wonderful movie that doesn’t contain a lot of action scenes, James Bond spends a lot of time facing his mistakes and learning his most important lesson thanks to M: trust no one. While being less predictable than Die Another Day, this film really keeps us on our seat with extremely hot situations until the very end. The scriptwriters certainly seemed to adopt the schematic approach used in The Eye. At the end, we really get to fully understand all the things that we couldn’t understand.

Speaking about Daniel Craig (Munich), the actor who plays James Bond, he did left most of us with doubts during the official press conference held in London (near the Thames River) that was meant to introduce him. In fact, British journalists were completely taken aback when they saw that Craig arrived (in a motorized military boat driven by British soldiers) at that press conference with… a lifejacket. Hopefully, that movie shows us that Daniel Craig was the perfect choice to replace Pierce Brosnan.

With Craig in the movie, you can certainly draw some comparisons with former James Bond star Sean Connery. As opposed to Connery, Craig is not likely to make some play on words or make subtle jokes while being serious. The James Bond that you see is much tougher than the one played by Pierce Brosnan and Craig really – and I mean “really” – sweats or bleeds for real during a fight scene. By attempting to get closer to Sean Connery in terms of style, Craig doesn’t just give us the darkest James Bond; of all the actors who played James Bond, Daniel Craig is the best.

Finally, this James Bond movie might not necessarily please to those who have seen the movies starring Pierce Brosnan. In fact, Casino Royale is more about talking and thinking than about action. Nonetheless, this movie certainly has two things that will evidently please to all the fans of James Bond: one of the best script ever since GoldenEye and a solid performance delivered by actors. In fact, Daniel Craig is well supported by strong actors such as Mads Mikkelsen, as Le Chiffre, Eva Green (Kingdom of Heaven), as Vesper Lynd, and Giancarlo Gianini, as Rene Mathis.

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