Simply the best

Rating: 10/10 (28 October 2008)

To begin with, I'd like to echo what a lot of other people have said: that this is the best Bond movie ever, with the best Bond--and also, I would add, the best Bond girl; or woman, rather. It's not only a good Bond movie, it's good independently of that label, which probably can't be said of any of the others after the first two. I'd hoped the producers would return to the start of the cycle redo all the other novels with the same flair and bite; this hope was probably naive.
I've become convinced that a lot of movies, especially those belonging to popular forms, can be boiled down to a small number of essentials, or one essential, that conveys the intended experience more strongly than the whole does. Take, for instance, the Hammer horror films of the 50s and 60s. They can be boiled down to one film, the first: Christopher Lee's premiere appearance as Dracula. The film can be boiled down to its musical score, and the score can be boiled down to one phrase: the three-note "Dracula" signature, as first heard over the name Dracula on his casket. That's the basic experience of the movie, and it only takes a few seconds. The rest just approximates to it in varying degrees.
And so with the Bond series. It can be boiled down to the first (or any of the others, for that matter), and that can be boiled down in turn the opening view through a gunsight--a view to a kill--and the playing of the Bond theme. None of the movies ever matched that music. Casino Royale is the first one that tries, or appears to try, to expand the effect of the theme into the movie and sustain it for two and a half hours. And it comes as close as any movie could (possibly excepting North by Northwest).
It does have a few faults. Most obviously, it's too long by a half hour; and I know just the two climaxes that comprise that half hour. Omitting them would improve the movie--but I don't know what would be put in their places. Also, one of Bond's lines, in a bar, is so esoteric that after half a dozen hearings I still don't understand it. But those are the only complaints.
Daniel Craig isn't a Bond we expect, but is all the more interesting for that. He has a "clipped, puzzled-idealist brutality" appropriate to the enlarged and improved version of Bond he gets to play. The quotation suits him to a T--but remarkably, it's an old description of Cary Grant when he played a secret agent in Notorious; and it will be remembered that he was the producers' first choice for Bond. In Casino Royale they have given Craig the scenes, to which he brings the ability, to enable him to make Bond into a rounded character. There's a lot going on inside him. One clever tactic the actor uses is to base his character's movements on parkour, especially in one scene where he searches a room by moving into, over, and out of it in the swiftest possible manner.
A characteristic of Craig's that helps him here, and which he shares with a lot of other Scottish actors: is that he's always on firm ground, wherever he is. You never doubt that he's in the place he's supposed to be, and that you're there with him. The Golden Compass, for instance, seemed to be drifting until Craig strode in and anchored it (then a few minutes later he strode out again and the film resumed drifting). Here he does the same whenever he's in view--which is almost all the time--and convinces you of what's happening, however fantastic it may appear.
He is aided immeasurably by having a fully drawn heroine opposite him. Unlike most Bond films, this one is a two-handed game. The woman brings him out, and he does the same for her. Eva Green was a great casting choice as his partner: assured but vulnerable, practical but romantic. The way in which we become acquainted with her parallels our getting to know Bond all over again. She begins as the stock Bond girl, and gains dimension until she, probably even more than Bond, is the character we most want to see, and to try to figure out.
The script is similarly generous to Judi Dench as M, who gives by far her best performance in a Bond film--not only because she has a strong arc to play but has also, in the new Bond, a character to truly contend against. The producers have reinvigorated the franchise with complete success.
I had been looking forward to the follow-up movie, but now that it's on the horizon I feel somewhat apprehensive. At bottom, Casino Royale has the simple, appealing story idea of the novel, which was a "hook" for the audience; I can't see that the sequel has one. CR is a little bit fantastic--albeit less so than most of the other Bonds--and I can't see that if the sequel is. I have a sinking feeling that the producers are wanting to turn the Bond series into something that better befits our more prosaic times: something like Robert Ludlum maybe? I hope they don't intend to jettison the Fleming influence entirely. I want to more movies just like this one.
It was worth waiting forty-five years for.