Casino loyale

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2006)

Simply,this is the best Bond since Connery 's heyday (1963-66) ,but do not expect the return of the good old days ."Casino Royale" is something different,if I should describe it,it would be a return to Ian Fleming's spirit.Those who know the novels will certainly agree.Daniel Craig makes Bond a cold hard unkind character,just the way he is in Fleming's books .Without Connery's sense of humour,his Bond has something disturbing ,even threatening...but he is also a frail human being, as the last scenes show.For the first time -with the exception of " On Her Majesty's secret service " - the ending leaves Bond a broken man.
I've never liked the Moore/Brosnan efforts .They had the occasional good song( "Live and let die") ,good cinematography (" the spy who loved me" by Claude Renoir),but the screenplays butchered Fleming's books -who had asked that after his death - thus after "THunderball" all the plots should be original ones using his titles and characters.And during Dalton's (the best of the post-Connery Bond until Craig's appearance:it's not a coincidence if both were first stage actors,having played Shakespeare)and Brosnan's era,as they were running out of novels,the writers started to write the titles too...
The cast and credits are sensational ,matching the splendor of those of "Goldfinger" and "Thunderball" .But the first sequences made me fear that Bond should become a superman once again.But the rest of the film is devoid of gimmicks,gadgets ,keeping the big poker game of the novel as its Pièce de Résistance ,and daring unusual inventive scenes (Bond's heart attack;the scene under the shower with Vesper:no it's not what you are thinking of!;the tears of blood) "Casino Royale" (I 've never understood the spelling;it's a French expression and should be written "Casino Royal" )makes veiled references to the places where "Thunderball" (Nassau) ,"Goldfinger "(Switzerland) and above all "From Russia with Love (the finale in Venice) were partly filmed.
Some of the viewers may remember the version of the sixties: an attempt at a spoof on the saga,it failed totally to convince me and the one thing I remember is Herb Alpert's music.So the script writers were right to make a new version of that book.Now could we dream of remakes of "you only live twice " (without the gadgets but with the "suicide" castle) and all the other novels transferred to the screen in the seventies and eighties which ,as the first four episodes did ,would roughly follow Fleming's plots?
NB:Eva Green's mother ,Marlene Jobert ,was one of the biggest French stars of the late sixties/early seventies.