Good Action Movie but Poor Bond Film

Rating: 7/10 (28 January 2009)

Casino Royale is the worst James Bond movie. Nevertheless, it's one of the best action films I've watched. There are several essential ingredients of a successful Bond movie:
(1) The movie is set in exotic and scenic places;
(2) humorous interchange between Bond, his boss M and M's secretary Miss Moneypenny;
(3) a half-mad inventor Q who despairs of Bond's cavalier attitude to his gadgets;
(4) Bond's women to be beautiful, sexy and seductive;
(5) Bond only has a sexual interest in women and never becomes emotionally involved. He seduces women but the seduction is mutual;
(6) Bond has an impeccable taste and the flair of a man well-endowed with savoir-faire. He is a bon viveur and knows his food, wine and liquors;
(7) continuous action, even in bed, without lagging romantic and otherwise boring interludes;
(8) Bond movies are based on a high degree of fantasy, (John Le Carre, and SpyCatcher have revealed that the real world of British espionage is dreadfully dull and boring). Therefore, to appeal to any audience with average intelligence to make such fantastical high jinks palatable plenty of subtle humour - stopping just short of turning the whole thing into a comedy- is expected. For example in an early Bond movie a thug during a brawl with Bond ends up in bath tub into which is thrown a live electric fan. Admiring the deadly results of his mayhem Bond mutters "Very shocking!";
(9) The master villain is larger than life, completely mad and usually fond of nasty white Persian cats;
(10) In two of the best Roger Moore Bond movies there is also a secondary villain Jaws, a rather sympathetic thug.
Casino Royale does take place largely in exotic and wonderful places (presumably to give those of the audiences in e.g. Iowa or Alaska who have never owned a passport the thrill of foreign travel without the runs). However, whereas Roger Moore in Venice contents himself with mayhem in a Venetian glass museum, David Craig's Bond demolishes a whole storied fifteenth century palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal.
Alas there is no humorous interchange between Bond and M. Judy Dench as a female M has been miscast since the Brosnan days, a waste of a fine actress. Moreover, Miss Moneypenny has obviously been reengineered out of existence by some government cost-saving programme. There is no Q and Bond has to make do with his aging Aston Martin apparently without the gadgetry that came with it in Goldfinger. The first woman, Caterina Murino (a Penelope Cruz look alike), that David Craig's Bond beds on his mission is indeed sexy and a seductress but this beautiful Spanish-Italian actress has only a minor role. The leading star actress Eva Green is plain at best with a horrible make up that makes her look like Michael Jackson in drag and a hairstyle that must have been fixed by a misogynist. Her role is a woman completely lacking in charm.
David Craig is oozing excess testosterone, as required, but the script writers have made him become emotionally involved with Eva Green. A Bond No-No! Besides the rest of his character development (the supercilious Brosnan without the suavity) does not lead us to expect this outcome. Craig's scripted "weakness" give M a chance to scold him like a schoolmarm for being too trusting!
Elegant? David Craig portrays the 1990s Berk, reminiscent of an uncouth street-wise Billingsgate currency trader. He wears his suits and Tuxedos, when he's not in K-Mart denims, as if he rented them one size too big from Moss Bros. His dear old Mum must have cut his hair with the garden shears back home in Wigan. Hasn't anyone told the scriptwriters that drinking fizzy white wine and eating smelly fish roe on toast is now passé and bad form, as well as incredibly stupid, when in the middle of a high stake poker match? Also they have made the Bond character way behind the times in ordering a dry martini and forcing him to commit a blasphemy by replying to the barman that he doesn't care if it's shaken or stirred (one of Craig's few feeble attempts at humour). The action is one of the strong points of Casino Royale but with rather too many pointless boring interludes. The worst aspect of the movie is its almost complete lack of humour. A flaw also of On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the Bond movies that were made with Dalton as Bond. The few attempts at humour are badly delivered and feeble, the worst being the one about Bond' little finger, crude and cheesy at best. This film takes itself too seriously for its genre but maybe that is a sign of the times. The main villain is devoid of feline company and is a rather boring money launderer for world terrorism who is eventually knee-capped by Bond. The secondary villain (played by Mads Mikkelsen), is more in the Bond tradition, with a disfiguring cast on his one eye and an Adolph Hitler hairdo (they left out the stubby moustache which would have been too obvious). He is mild mannered, and more elegant than David Craig. He is very cool although his life is in danger because of missing funds owed to the big master villain which he must recoup by winning a high stake poker game into which Bond is planted.
I liked the movie as an action film with a nice twist at the end but a s a Bond movie it failed miserably.