Deal Him In

It's possible to call Casino Royale a success because it does one thing very well: it introduces Daniel Craig as 007. While press notices and publicity people led me to believe that Craig would be grim to the point of moribund, Craig showed much greater range than that. He could be charming, flirty, punny, arrogant, sweaty, vulnerable, angry, and determined--sometimes all at once. He did a lot to remind me of Connery, but there were welcome doses of Moore and Brosnan in as well. Craig has established himself in the role, and I look forward to seeing him take his next turn.

The movie itself is more problematic, suffering some of the same difficulties that plagued The Living Daylights. It's overlong (144 minutes, longer than any Bond film I remember), and its plot is byzantine to the point of being nearly incomprehensible. When "M" has to put in an appearance after 137 minutes in order to provide additonal narrative summary, you know the plot's too complicated. The movie also suffers from the worst case of lack-of-villains syndrome in any Bond I've seen. The most prominent of the villians, LeChiffre, weeps blood tears (thus following the formula of the major villiains' having some sort of physical defect), but he never produces much in the way of menace. He seems more desperate and pathetic than dangerous, and I never believed he'd present 007 with a challenge. The way that he and Bond interact, at a high stakes poker game, sparks little banter. Compared to the baccarat games in Goldeneye and Thunderball, the golf game in Goldfinger, or the backgammon game in Octopussy, Casino Royale's poker sequence is staid, taciturn, and dull. Bond and LeChiffre spend most of their time glaring at each other icily while turning over improbably high poker hands. (What is it about poker movies that they can never let someone win the climactic poker battle with a pair of aces, a straight, two-pair, or three-of-a-kind? They always have to have the villain with four-of-a-kind, beaten out by the hero's royal flush.) While LeChiffre fails to generate much terror, Bond's other adversaries are nameless, faceless, and interchangeable. For terrorists, they're not especially terrifying.

Eva Green's turn as Vesper Lynde, though, was a good one, and her chemistry with Craig helps keep the pace from flagging. It's a pity Bond had to fall in love with her--the kiss of death--because I would have liked to see her again. Oh, well. I'll have to take what I get here, and what I get is the real reason for watching this movie.

The action set pieces are almost all wonderful--especially an early foot chase through a construction site in Madagascar (which involves stunts I've never seen, and I thought I knew all the tricks.) I only quibble with the opening sequence, which struck me as the most hackneyed and predictable part of the film. I won't say much about it, except that the sequence could have appeared in just about any generic spy movie. They'd have been better off starting with the Madagascar chase, but I guess the filmmakers wanted to establish a tone. They didn't need to, but I guess they wanted to.

Still, quibbles and beefs aside, I thought Casino Royale was an enjoyable 007 romp. I'd rank it in the middle of the debut pack. It's better than The Living Daylights, about even with Live and Let Die, and a rung below Dr. No, Goldeneye, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I hope that next time Craig gets a stronger script, so that he has a story to match the quality of his work.

(Oh, by the way, I blogged a few days ago about the "Does it look like I give a damn" line in this film. As it turns out, Craig's Bond is just as particular about his martini as any other Bond. He delivered this line just after he'd blown a large sum of money at the gaming tables, and was feeling understandably frustrated.)