A new lease of life for Bond

Rating: 7/10 (22 November 2006)

Writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (with a little help from Crash's Paul Haggis) have gone literally right back to the drawing board with this one by adapting writer Ian Fleming's very first Bond novel. So, what we get here is an origin story, stripped of the usual gadgets and excess, a film that shows how Bond became the character we know and explores just what it takes to be that character. The opening pre-credits scene is like nothing you have ever seen in a Bond movie before. Filmed in stark black and white we see Bond confront an MI6 traitor with flashbacks to his first kill, a crunchingly brutal fight in a toilet. This really is a radical departure, a Bond who is clearly in pain when he gets hit and who is clearly quite emotionally moved by the brutal pain he inflicts. Back in the present, he dispatches the traitor with a harsh coldness that indicates how the job has already begun to sap some of his humanity. It's a great scene that promises a harsh and dirty hit-man thriller and leads, via a clever use of the famous iris intro, into an opening credits sequence with great retro style and not a gyrating female silhouette in sight. After the credits, we are back in conventional Bond territory with a dramatic, stunt filled chase and fight sequence as our hero tries to capture a terrorist bomb maker. Thrilling though this scene is in moments, this is also where Casino Royale's problems seem to kick in. In adapting Fleming's thin novella with its limited numbers of characters and locations, Purvis and Wade decide to add in a wider plot of more conventional James Bond action moments that don't exactly sit right with the other parts. There are times when it feels like a film that wants to have its cake and eat it, that there are two very different films here awkwardly stuck together. Fortunately, both of these two films are pretty enjoyable. The action part containing some classic Bond moments in suitably beautiful, exotic settings like the Bahamas and Montenegro, in particular the opening chase involving parkour expert Sebastien Foucan leaping around cranes and scaffolding on a building site. It looks great but there is also a real sense of danger. In his second Bond picture after revitalising the series once before with the excellent post-Cold War Goldeneye, director Martin Campbell brings a visceral painful quality to the fights and stunts. Each punch and fall is loudly and sickeningly soundtracked to give a real feeling of pain while Bond seems to be scrambling just to hold on and stay alive in moments like the airport sequence, stunts more reminiscent of the seat of your pants Indiana Jones style than the invulnerable Roger Moore. However, despite the undoubted enjoyment in these action moments, the real quality of this film is in the central Casino Royale scenes and there is a certain shame in the filmmakers having not stuck to their guns and made a smaller, more intimate and stylishly retro spy thriller like this. Campbell has an impressive ability to draw out the tension in the card game while keeping the intervals between play packed with intrigue and bursts of tough action. The intimacy of the poker game allows for the film to truly explore a close confrontation between Bond and villain Le Chiffre, an impressively inscrutable Mads Mikkelsen, sporting a classic Bond villain scar and some creepy tears of blood. This section, and the film as a whole, really kicks into gear with the first introduction of the girl, Eva Green's Vesper Lynd, on a train across Europe engaging in some dinner table banter with Bond reminiscent of the glamour and spark of Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint in North by Northwest. While the film's other girls are more the clichéd Bond girl eye candy, Vesper is a real match for Bond. With a strong, convincing performance from Green, the French actress delivering an impressive cut glass English accent, Vesper is smart, sassy and easily the sexiest accountant ever on film. She is a strong woman but not in the sense of Halle Berry's cartoonish Jinx in the last film, a male action stereotype grafted onto a female character. Vesper gives as good as she gets but is still a feminine character and is actually bothered by what Bond does for a living which makes a refreshing change, the scene where she breaks down in the shower after witnessing, and playing a part in, a particularly brutal killing is a level of emotional intensity and realism that we do not expect from a Bond film. Green as Vesper is easily one of the best Bond girls in any film in the series. Of course, the real strength of Casino Royale is in Bond himself, the character having greater depth and range and strongly played by Daniel Craig dispelling all the initial doubts about his casting. While Craig's emotional coldness is often a problem in his other films, it perfectly fits the callous aspect of Bond's character but Craig is also able to turn on the charm if needs be. The film cleverly plays with a few of the character's conventions, having him win a gorgeous 1960s Aston Martin in an early poker game and being not remotely bothered whether his Martini is shaken or stirred after ordering a drink in a flustered moment. Craig brings a combination of being the first Bond to be really in pain physically and emotionally and being the first to truly convince as someone who can do what he does. His impressive musculature is obvious and its clear that here is a man who could take you out, while he obviously has no trouble with a gun either. It will be interesting to see where Bond goes from here and whether the producers stick to this bold new direction or quickly revert to the old clichés as in the Brosnan years.