Daniel Craig. You’ve seen Layer Cake right? If not go out and buy it now, Morrison’s sell it for £5.99. I always thought he’d make a great Bond and ever since I saw the teaser posters I knew he would.
There aren’t many spoilers in this but if you’re worried about having the plot revealed just go and see the film now, I promise you won’t regret it.
Anyhoo, let’s start at the beginning. Some exposition in black and white (echoing the original filmic beggining of Bond), how does Bond become a ‘double O’ agent? This is answered swiftly and brutally and we spend the rest of the film being shown how Bond becomes Bond, James Bond.
Did I mention? This new Bond is hard as fucking nails, when he gives you a kicking you stay kicked. Right from the start we see he has no truck with any grace under pressure nonsense, whethers it’s killing someone with his bare hands or running through walls (yes, through walls) there’s no mucking about with new Bond.
The credits sequence is slightly odd, forgoing the traditional projections onto naked women (good) in favour of a highly stylised CG flat colour graphics with a card suites theme (not so good). Theme tune duties on “You Know My Name” are handled by Chris Cornell (ex-Soundgarden) and the film’s composer David Arnold and as with the rest of the film it deviates from the established Bond pattern, in this case the shoe-horning of the films title into a song. It’s also nice to see a move away from the cliched Bassey style vocals that have been the norm with Bond since the sixties. Cornell’s vocal, whilst distinctly his, is subtle and measured and the lyrics are clearly written for the film as you would expect but aren’t too reference heavy, unlike some themes I could mention.
The story centers around terrorist funding, and as such resists what in the hands of lesser film makers would have been the temptation to go all out and write about terrorists. The long and short of it is that a shady investment banker, Le Chiffre, who offers his services to terrorists and ‘freedom fighters’ loses all of his clients’ money after investing it unwisely on a stock market trend that, thanks to Bond, never happens. Having lost this money he’s keen to win it back, not liking the idea of being tortured to death by his clients I would imagine, so arranges to take part in a high stakes poker game. There’s more to it than that obviously but I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you would I?
Actually, about the casino aspect, it’s interesting that they’ve changed the game played at Casino Royale from baccarat to poker, which is currently an extremely popular pastime. It’s just another indication of their desire to modernise the franchise.
What would a Bond movie be without gadgets? Answer? Fucking awesome that’s what, there are no obvious gadgets employed by Bond (although one would have to ask why his car comes equipped with a defibrillator) but those that he does have are fairly plausible, no magnetic watches with built in buzz-saws for example, just GPS phones with outrageously high resolution screens. And no schtick from John Cleese thankfully.
The whole re invention of Bond is handled remarkably well, the movie is filled with references to previously established Bond behaviours, and at every turn the film acknowledges them and moves on, this is more or less a manifestation on screen of what the producers are doing with the franchise. There is one torture scene that I felt was very much a literalisation of what there trying to do to the series, I won’t spoil it for you but if you take Bond as being a symbol for what the films had turned into you’ll get the gist.
The jokes are all there, but they’ve changed there aren’t any turns-to-camera-wink-wink style sexist gags, no witty one liners after dispatching a henchman. They’ve moved on, they’re more sophisticated now. It’s ironic that in previous movies Bond was portrayed as being sophisticated and suave yet managed to come out with some horrendously smutty one liners, yet in Casino Royale we’ve got the grittiest Bond ever who spends a great deal of the film battered and bleeding but still manages to retain more dignity than any of his predecessors.
It truly is the re-birth of Bond, if you try to align it with the other Bond films you can’t and that’s its appeal. The first time you see Bond drive a car it’s a Ford Mondeo, a Mondeo! This is an important signal that Bond is back down to earth. I suspect we’ll see a slightly smoother Bond in the next film but I do hope they leave in his vicious streak, Bond lost his soul in this film, let’s see what he loses next.
Oh and before I forget, the best bit? No Robbie fucking Coltrane.
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