Directed by: Martin Campbell
Premise: James Bond (Daniel Craig) must keep a
corrupt banker from winning a million dollar poker tournament and using the
winnings to fund terrorism.
What Works: Casino Royale plays as a prequel
to the other films and reinvents James Bond, placing him in contemporary times
but at the start of his career. As a result the film is able to give audiences a
totally new Bond experience but with some of the familiar elements of a 007
film. Re-creating Bond for the early 21st century, Casino Royale features a harsher and more complex protagonist than other films in the series
and its spy work has a greater dependence of stealth, detective work, and
psychology than on gadgets and over the top explosions. In that respect, Casino
Royale has more in common with The
Bourne Identity than it does with the Bond films staring Pierce Brosnan.
The violence is much more intense and the action sequences, while frequent and
well executed, are grounded in credible stunts that make the scenes far more
exciting. Casino Royale’s Bond Girl, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), is also
given a make over, and played as a much smarter and much more complex character
than perhaps any other Bond Girl in the series. The same is true of the villain
Les Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), as the character is driven by more immediate needs
than something as nebulous as world domination. His motivation makes him a much
more dangerous character and places much more at stake at the poker game than in
the average episode of Celebrity
Poker.
What Doesn’t: Casino Royale is about
twenty minutes too long. The recovery sequences in particular could have been
curtailed. Also, the film has about three false endings and when it finally gets
to the last one, it is done so abruptly that it leaves the audience waiting for
more.
Bottom Line: Casino Royale is one of the best Bond films in years, probably the best since the Roger Moore pictures. The film smartly updates the character to the contemporary age and jettisons the cartoonish elements of more recent films. The result is a very good film that equals—and in some cases exceeds—the best entries in the series.