Bond Begins

Rating: 8/10 (21 March 2007)

There seem to be quite a few people around the world who have a problem with "Casino Royale". There are even anti-Daniel Craig websites, most of which would have you believe that the 39 year-old English actor and latest 007 is on a par with Osama Bin Laden in the "evil" stakes. Let's try and gain a little perspective here, shall we? The Bond franchise is a string of movies with different actors playing the same central character, most of which conform to a formula invented by Ian Fleming a long time ago, in a beach house far far away. Daniel Craig is simply the latest actor to slip into a tux and order a vodka martini, not the AntiChrist.
A lot of people seem to want the same old 007 formula in their Bond movies, forgetting the stale old guff of the late Roger Moore era when the scripts looked even more tired and drawn than the ageing star. The only reason that the franchise continued for so long with Moore as Bond was because he was used to acting within formulaic constraints. His previous long-running role as "The Saint" on TV definitely helped! I'm not saying that the next Bond movie should be directed by Lars Von Trier and scripted by Baz Luhrman and Gus Van Sant, just that a little re-invention is no bad thing.
Attempts were made to liven things up when Timothy Dalton took over, but the scripts continued to follow Lt Commander Fleming's not-so-secret recipe and Dalton struggled to make anything of the role as the Cold War began to thaw and secret agents went out of fashion. Pierce Brosnan enlivened the role of Bond when he took over (with a more modern take on global politics evident in his movies,) but he too fell victim to the rigidity of the Bond format. "Die Another Day" was as stale and flat as "A View to A Kill". John Cleese simply did not work as Desmond Llewelyn's replacement in the Q Department and Samantha Bond had nowhere to go as Moneypenny after her virtual reality snog with 007 put her character's cards on the table. The Must-have-Q-must-have-Moneypenny rules were in dire need of burning, along with the predictable Bond plot format.
Going back to Ian Fleming's first 007 book from 1953, "Casino Royale" was the perfect opportunity to give James Bond a bit more room to move and for the franchise to develop. Anyone who's read the book will see that the film takes a lot of cues from its source material. Before Fleming started churning out his "Girls, Guns & Gadgets" production line novels (a well-developed formula by the time Sean Connery starred in "Dr No" in 1962,) he initially developed the character of James Bond in "Casino Royale", his original Bond novel.
Criticising this film because it's nothing like "Goldfinger" is like criticising Daniel Craig because he's not Sean Connery. So what if Daniel Craig doesn't have dark hair? The English-as-can-be Bond has been played by a Scot, an Australian, a Welshman and an Irishman in the past. In the light of these liberties, quibbling about Bond's hair colour is pretty desperate.
View "Casino Royale" without judging it against other Bond movies and it stands up well on its own. The action scenes and stunts are bone-jarring, the dialogue is well-written, the plot is functional and the cast performances are of a very high calibre. Compare it to the "Bourne" movies starring Matt Damon and it fares pretty well too. Bourne is the spy thriller benchmark for the new millennium and this new Bond comes pretty close to unsettling the young CIA upstart.
Daniel Craig is a younger, bulkier, blonder Bond and about time too. Long may he reign...