Casino Royale

Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 24 minutes
Directed by: Martin Campbell

Starring:
Daniel Craig - James Bond
Eva Green - Vesper Lynd
Mads Mikkelsen - Le Chiffre
Judi Dench - M
Jeffrey Wright - Felix Leiter

I feel bad for James Bond.

I feel bad for him because while he’s not saddled with mythology like Spider-Man or Wolverine, he’s saddled with iconography. You know what he drinks. You know what he drives. You know how he introduces himself. The latest Bond film tries to walk the line between iconoclasm and reintroduction. It does so surprisingly well and with a new Bond (Daniel Craig) and three crappy films we need to forget (Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day), it’s necessary to walk this line. The results don’t always work, like when Bond drives a fucking Ford but the film tends to get in a good laugh with the drink orders as well as twisting Bond’s persona into something darker, cooler, and less quippy and self-aware.

Director Martin Campbell manages to top his previous Bond opening from Goldeneye (the intro where Bond catches up to the falling plane was tongue-in-cheek but it still worked) with a black-and-white opening of Bond earning his 00-status by making two kills. The film then gets to the main plot of the villainous Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) who funds terrorism in order to control the stock market and funnel the money through the Casino Royale. With the help of treasury agent Vesper Lynd (Eva Green)

The film’s big weakness is its runtime gets weighted down by one action scene too many. Bond basically has to chase a terrorist two separate times and the first chase on foot is far better than Bond hunting down Terrorist #2 at an airport. However, a good chunk of time gets placed to where recent Bond films neglected to particpate: character development. The relationship between Bond and Vesper not only fills the necessity of getting audiences to accept Craig as their new Bond, but also manages to create one of the best Bond girls in the franchise’s history.

With super-spies like Jason Bourne running around, James Bond definitely needed this shot in the arm after out-sourcing glaciers and playing sidekick to Halle Berry’s Jinx. Now the next big challenge is not wasting Daniel Craig like they did with Pierce Brosnan and providing scripts that try to do more than just coast on long-running franchise.

Words by
Matt Goldberg
11.22.06

Rating: 7.5 out of 10