Casino Royale

Director: Martin Campbell

Right off the top, no fooling: I think the best James Bond was Sean Connery and the best James Bond film was "Diamonds are Forever". Furthermore in a spirit of clear disclosure, I don't really mind George Lazenby as James Bond at all, and in order from good to bad, I think that after Connery the best Bonds go: George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and finally, Roger Moore. My pick for worst Bond film is a hard choice simply because some of them aren't just "bad Bond films" ... they are dreadful pieces of shit in their own right. As far as dreadful pieces of shit go, "A View to a Kill" is the worst of the Roger Moore films and as such, is the worst of the lot. As far as my rather obvious antipathy towards Roger Moore goes? I have major problems with obviously and blatantly drunk actors. Call it a personal thing.

Now that you know where I am coming from...

A new James Bond film, with a new James Bond, really appealed to me, especially since the technique used to pick the new Bond seemed to be something other than the "pin the tail on the Bond" that had been used for the last attempts. The trailers looked good, the publicity looked good, and the advance reviews looked good. I resolved to go and see this one at the movies. The last Bond I actually saw first at the movies was "Goldeneye" and you can probably read between the lines there. (Note: Oddly, "Goldeneye" was also directed by Martin Campbell.)

The theatre was half full. Most of them were talkers, grunters and munchers. We moved twice, the second time because this alcoholic, unwashed person sat five seats away from us and the stink made our eyes bleed. The Greater Union complex on George Street Sydney, does not spray their seats with disinfectant between shows. This realisation makes my skin crawl.

The film started well, and lumbered from good through deadly powerfully dull, back through good to pretty good, back through dull into deadly dull and then into big and finally ground itself out in something like a backache. It was too long, and presupposed an interest in card games but all up, "Casino Royale" was good stuff. Daniel Craig actually looked like James Bond ought to look, sexy, intelligent and dangerous. He does not look like a wheeled suit rack, and he can actually act. Moreover, he actually acts in the actual James Bond film! All the way through. Having sat through all of them at least once each, I can say that this is a grand and much welcomed return to old standards. As far as that goes, when Daniel Craig hits people, it looks like he actually hits them. This, also is good. The "balloon on a stick" approach to personal violence evidenced by Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan never did much for me. Never appeared to do much to anyone else, either. Daniel Craig, as well as all that, is actually sexy. In fact, dead sexy. All up, Daniel Craig is easily the best Bond since Sean Connery. Did I say sexy? And can act? Good.

The film however, is a lumbering beast that tries to be too many things at once and sadly, fails at some of them. Within ten minutes or so of the beginning the new Bond finds a "bad guy" at the mongoose fights and chases him through one of the most gigantic set piece chases I have probably ever seen. Vast amounts of stuff gets smashed, people get shot, stuff gets crushed, crashes happen. I was bored out of my fucking mind. The chase was dull. It was some guy, chasing some other guy. The reasons that the "bad guy" were "bad" were not explained till much later, and then only sketchily, and the new Bond was at that point just that, some other guy. So the guy without the scar, chased the guy with the scar and stuff happened. It was neither exciting, or funny. In my humble opinion, one or the other is good, because deadly dull is bad, bad, bad.

As soon as that scene finished M (Judy Dench) threatened to take James Bonds badge now get out of my office. Oh. I seem to be mixing up Lethal Weapon and James Bond. Same thing anyway, even if Judy Dench can act better than than most people who have to be in scenes like that. The scenes in question were half bad cliché and worse than that, half almost reality. One not particularly veiled reference to the present idiot UK Prime Minister and reference to the power of the English press almost lost me. After all, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't James Bond a fantasy? Like, Ian Fleming didn't even take this shit seriously, did he? I don't think ever did, anyway. What's with this new "hard edge"? Worse than that, when did the Bond franchise stop using cool secret gadgets and start plugging Sony brand stuff? That really turned my stomach. For me at least half of the pleasure of the Bond films has been the idea that maybe, in a few years, I might be able to have some of the cool gadgets that I see in the films. After all, I enjoyed using my watch that printed Dymo tape until I ran out of tape. Frankly the idea that James Bond uses some clunko Sony Viao laptop infected with Windows does absolutely nothing for me. Less than nothing, actually. In fact, it jerks me right out of "James Bond" and into "fictional representation of real events delivered in bullshit form." As far as that goes, so do references to September 11.

And when I start judging James Bond with the same intensity that I use to look at real events... James Bond is going to lose.

Speaking of fantasy, the whole idea behind James Bond has always been that the British Secret Service were the "good guys" and the CIA were also "good" and that just about everyone else was "bad". It is mindless and utterly wrong, but it is fun. This new "real" Bond pits our hero against just about the whole world and the whole world is made up of nothing but rival factions of increasingly repulsive people all fighting each other. When Bond fights say, SPECTRE, I can submerge my real feelings for the CIA and enjoy the film. In "Casino Royale" on the other hand, Bond becomes a marginally less arsehole person fighting hundreds of factions of similar people all high on the arsehole scale. At no point in the film was I 100% sure what everyone was actually fighting about and I cared a lot less. Long, long before the end of "Casino Royale" I was wondering if it would be possible to kill everyone in the film (Bond included) and see if the world was improved by their passing. I am a big fan of the books of Trevanian, you see. If Bond is a fantasy, it can be good. If it veers into reality, it suffers, and suffers very badly indeed. If it veers into propaganda, and "Casino Royale" emphatically does not, (but the temptation must be there)... it could easily be fatal.

Aside from these major quibbles I actually liked "Casino Royale" quite a lot. I didn't begrudge the ticket price and I was pleased that finally someone was attempting to do something with the franchise other than parade some prawn around in front of major tourist landmarks in increasingly stupid cars for increasingly idiotic reasons. If "Casino Royale" has overcompensated in its avoidance of this, it can be forgiven, so long as its holds fast to the central ideals of the franchise and avoids the pitfalls of following popular fashion instead of creating it. When James Bond is "like" the Bourne Supremacy... then James Bond is in trouble.

It's a hard act to pull off, but I saw "Casino Royale" at the movies, and I will see the next one at the movies too, and that is an amazing thing for me to think, let alone type.

A fascinating revitalisation. But it needs some tuning.

(C)opyright Alex Rieneck, 2007.