A masterclass in how to save an endangered series

Rating: 9/10 (18 November 2006)

History is littered with decisive reversals, one immediately thinks of the Nazis at Stalingrad or Liverpool in the 2005 Champions league final but to these we can now add Casino Royale; as complete and affirming a rebuke to the Pierce Brosnan quartet of derivative, self-parodic Bonds as you could dare hope for. It is, following 2002's ludicrous Die Another Day, nothing short of a cinematic miracle  a creative shot of heroin to Bond's dick, as coarse and as eye opening as Le Chiffe's rope  a global audience strapped to their seat less chair and forced to atone for their patronage of the Brosnan stupidity, a rumoured title incidentally for his aborted fifth entry. Yes, welcome to Dalton's revenge.
The change of fortune for the series is incredible given where we were only four years and one film ago. All the more amazing given the previous film's box office clout, Royale is a rare instance of the filmmakers looking beyond the numbers and thinking of their audience and the result deserves huge credit, not least because it's a brave thing to have done but also because in abandoning the expedient option and simply trotting out another piece of pantomime stupidity, they've talked up to Bond's global constituency of fans and potentially laid the foundations for a new and exciting era for the series.
The "fans" are an issue here because whoever they are, God alone knows what they'll think of the rougher tone and the lack of camp and innuendo that's blighted previous instalments. In their place we have, given the treatment of Fleming's previous novels, an incredible faithful adaptation, tweaked certainly but losing none of the cold, ironical and brutal characterisation that defined the author's work. Timothy Dalton, until now the best of the bunch, went some way toward putting the literary Bond on screen but was constrained somewhat by an established formula which he invigorated but on that occasion didn't break. When he pushed it further in Licence to Kill he was branded a failure. Daniel Craig has no such difficulties. In sourcing the first novel, Craig is free to pretend his predecessors didn't exist and obliterates them with a performance ripped from the page. Series purists may argue he's too cold, lacks humour, fails to temper the nastiness with wit but this is incidental, lazy criticism. Craig ties Connery for the definitive portrayal because whatever's chucked at him he can argue, and be the first to be accurate on this point, that he's Ian Fleming's James Bond  something that only Dalton and the aforementioned Scotsman could have got close to.
Hyperbole aside, its fair to say that Craig doesn't so much p*ss on Brosnan's chips as deep fry them in his own urine. It really is the difference between Bollinger Grande Annee and a glass of Tesco's own but then these are two very different takes not just on the character but on his entire world  the series has been completely rebuilt and the effect is as glorious as it exhilarating. Gone is the sub-Austin Powers regurgitation of old motifs and plots and in their place we have Fleming's story, short enough to be beefed up with modern action set-pieces but rooted in the characters of Bond and Vesper Lynd to the extent that 90% of the script writer's work has been done for them. The key word here is restraint because in sticking to the book and resisting the temptation to work in moronic puns, playing cards that double as plastic explosives and brain dead supporting cleavage, Purvis & Wade (with help from Paul Haggis), who's previous efforts were so poor many suspected they'd been replaced by a computer called BANG (the B-movie Action Narrative Generator), have rehabilitated themselves with a plot that really moves, dialogue that occasionally zings and a structure that effortlessly integrates the book's action-lite narrative with the meatier requirements of the contemporary action event movie. Judy Dench, confusingly returned here as M and consequently raising some awkward questions about series continuity, looks like she's in a different set of films and the new lease of life is infectious  various sequences imbued with a immediacy and violence missing from a generations worth of Bond adventures. Its not perfect  the opening titles are paired down but look decidedly basic, like the introduction to a sadistic version of Play your Cards Right. Its arguably, like yours truly, a fraction too long and the product placement though scaled down still offends but Poker never held your attention like this in a mainstream action adventure and the set up for the next film leaves a sense of anticipation that speaks volumes for the intelligent and well judged film that's been made here.
For fans of the series this should be an invigorating shot in the arm but the experience of Dalton forces us to sound a note of caution. There is no doubt that Casino Royale is one of the best Bonds, ranking with From Russia with Love, OHMSS and the Living Daylights amongst the series vintage instalments but the experience of Lazenby's film and the two Timothy's shows us that audiences have historically, in the US at least, rejected the paired down, serious takes on the character. In these slightly more cynical times lets hope that Fleming's 1950's character has finally caught up with the mood of his audience. The filmmakers have done their part after all and Craig deserves to be a worldwide smash so if this isn't the start of as long and lucrative era for the series you'll only have yourselves to blame. No really, there's no excuse now  Royale is the Bond movie some of us have been waiting on for years, the only thing that can ruin the series now is the stupidity of its audience and in that event you really will deserve to be patronised with Brosnan like nonsense. Craig deserves better than that and so do we.