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Casino Royale

Film // Jim // 27th November 2006

I’ve read that when Daniel Craig was offered the role of James Bond, he was a bit unsure about it. After the last couple of Bond films, you can’t really blame him. So he sat down and mad lists of pros and cons in order to help him make his mind up as to whether it was a good idea or not. Having just sat through his inaugural outing as 007 I thought I’d do the same thing to establish whether it is any good or not.

The Pros

The Parkour chase sequence at the start
You may remember Parkour, or free running from the initially interesting, but ultimately disappointing Jump London, or that BBC advert where the bloke runs across rooftops to get home in time for neighbours.
Anyhow, right a near the start there is a fantastic extended chase where Bond is after a bomb maker, played by a leading Parkour exponent. Apart from being really spectacular it nicely sets up what to expect from the shockingly brawny Daniel Craig for the rest of the film. The free runner exquisitely vaults through a gap in some partition wall. Bond simply bashes his way straight through it to continue his pursuit.
As the scene continues they end up hundreds of feet up on a crane and resort to throwing empty guns at each other like some kind of hyper-budgeted episode of Police Squad, very funny.

Daniel Craig
A lot has been written about how excellent Daniel Craig is in Casino Royale and indeed he is, which is a shame for those people running the very odd craignotbond web site. A lot of the praise revolves around the fact that he looks as though he has spent about a year doing nothing but press ups. In this film Bond looks like he could give you a serious kicking, something that I suppose Connery had too, but Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan were lacking a bit.

Daniel Craig: Press ups, needs a kip

What I really liked is the fact that for large portions of the film, he looks absolutely fucked. There are a couple of scenes where it looks like 007 has spent the previous evening in the pub with me, getting ripped to the tits on Guiness, and is having some deep, deep concerns about the workings of his digestive system. Despite the fact that he looks like he could bench press a house while kicking the face off a rabid rottweiler, he seems to need a bit of a lie down and a recuperative kip. Now that is what I call quality acting.

Some key facets of Eva Green’s performance
Without being too crude about things, lets just say that in his review Peter Bradshaw praises Eva Green’s “Olympic-standard embonpoint”, and that’s in the bloody Guardian. Honestly. Her accent is a touch shonky though, if we’re being really picky she never really reaches the heights of her Venus de Milo impression in The Dreamers.

The torture scene
I’ve not read any if the Ian Fleming books, but people who have seemed to know about this bit in advance. Bond is trussed up naked to a chair with the bottom cut out and, not to put too fine a point on it, has his bollocks whipped with a rope.
This scene manages to be unpleasant, very, very painful but also extremely funny at one point. I’m betting that most of the gents in the cinema had their hands in their laps at the end. I certainly did.

Afterwards there was a scene that suggested that Bond might be having a bit of trouble in the “wood” department as a result of this ordeal, crikey, you didn’t get that sort of thing from Roger Moore.

Isaach De Bankole turning up
I was chuffed to see Jim Jarmusch regular and all round great actor Isaach De Bankole appear in a small role as an African warlord type. He puts himself about scarily with a machete at one point, plus the bit where he advises someone to “get a new boyfriend” is ace.

The relentless brutality
The title sequence (which looks like it might have been done in Flash) serves as a warning of what is to come. Silhouette people are sliced, stabbed and skewered by a bunch of hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs. Pools of blood abound.

During the course of the film I was quite surprised by how unpleasantly violent the whole thing was. We first see Bond beating, drowning and shooting someone to death in a toilet, before long he is kicking the shit out of all and sundry. The influence of 24 and the brutal Jack Bauer seem fairly evident, especially in the way that Bond is put through the mill; bollock whippings, heart seizures and nails in the back just a selection of the abuse he withstands.

For a film rated 12, you will be surprised by how tough things get, the sequence in which Bond slowly strangles someone while covered in claret had a few kids heading for the exit, not looking all that happy. The bit where it looks like our hero is going to get castrated and fed his own bits and pieces had us all wincing. Octopussy it ain’t.

As this film seems to be setting up a plot of revenge and recrimination for the subsequent Daniel Craig films I wonder just how dark and nasty the next one is going to be. Bond goes Oldboy perhaps? Get the claw hammer ready.

The Cons

The theme tune
“You Know My Name” by Chris Cornell (formerly of Soundgarden it seems) is sub-Eurovision soft rock shite of the lowest order. Really it is absolutely terrible.

Some of the dialogue
Although it doesn’t get too cheesy and the actors are all quite good, there are a few moments of dialogue that are likely to make you wince a bit. Key example being the slightly flirty pseudo-psychology chat on the train, which I suppose is meant to re-call North by North-West, but ends up being as clunky as some wooden blocks being thrown down a concrete stairwell.

The old bloke called Mathis
Giancarlo Giannini plays a character whose entire function seems to be to explain happenings in the poker game sub plot in the same way that you would try to explain something to a four-year old with amnesia. For example
“Now zat James knows that Le Chiffre eez bluffing ee will ‘av to go all in. Zat is one and a ‘alf meelion in ze pot. Now we will zee ze cards, ee may be bluffing in wheech case James will lose ze money. Are you following zis, my dear? Oooh ee az ze three kings, quelle damage. Mon dieu. Merde totallement!”

The endless product placement
This is a real downer, there must be a good ten minutes of this film that is just close ups of Sony phones and laptops. The “Oh that;s a nice watch” bit is shocking, and Branson getting searched at the airport just depressing.
The execrable scrapings at the bottom of the barrel consist of the the extended shots of Daniel Craig driving around in a nice shiny new Ford Mondeo, oh for fucks sake, how much money do these people need?

So overall...

...the pros outweigh the cons (by 6 to 4) and Casino Royale is a very good action thriller. Don’t go expecting a big camp Bond film though because that’s not what this is at all.

In summary:
- The next few films could be really good.
- Daniel Craig is probably going to end up being seriously compared to Connery as the best Bond.
- The suggestion that 9/11 was a conspiracy for making a fortune in the futures market nicely illustrates how properly cynical this film is.
- It is a bit too long though, you might want a foot massage after.

Links

Official web site

All sorts of bits and pieces, has a game that I couldn't work out how to play

The terrible theme tune

Oh, it is rough. This from the man who sang Black Hole Sun

IMDB page for Casino Royale

Oh, it is rough. This from the man who sang Black Hole Sun

Le Parkour

Web site of free runner Sebastian Foucan.