Fantastic, shame about the last act

Rating: 9/10 (23 November 2006)

Casino Royale is, on the whole, a fantastic film. It contains breath-taking set pieces, a thrilling plot, and well developed characters. By going back to the start they are returning to Sean Connery's Bond, the charming psychopath, and Craig certainly gets the latter right. He is a smart, resourceful monster, lacking in conscience and with little morality. Any fans of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley series will see distinct similarities between the cold, calculating killers. As for the charm, the film implies it more than it actually comes out. Everywhere Bond goes girls pass second glances and fall at his feet, despite his often abrasive and slightly wooden lines. He's built like a monster of a man, and he acts it too. At the start of the film while chasing a free-runner, the limber antagonist flies up through a small gap in a wall and glides down the other side (it's truly impressive, as most free-running is)... Bond, chasing him, plows straight through the plaster wall and out the other side. A brilliant scene which perfectly defines his character at that point of the film.
As the film goes on, we are lead (often blindly... As part of the raw feel of the film we are hidden from any mission objectives) from scene to scene, all which perfectly build the story and the characters. The second act, centred around a game of poker, is truly thrilling whether you know the rules or not, and everything is going perfectly. And then, bang, we hit the third act and the film starts to fall apart.
Plot strands which were running separately start to flail wildly, people are disposed of with no real explanation why, and we are given half an hour of bad dialogue, followed by a spectacularly pointless finale where the audience are introduced to an Italian villa, and then are supposed to feel a sense of excitement as it begins to fall down. A last minute twist adds little, and a truly pointless martyrdom lead you to begin questioning where this film is going.
But worst of all, the film develops a totally different agenda. They might as well have held up a big banner saying "looky, we're relaunching the Bond series", and rather than give us a satisfactory ending, they simply hint towards a follow up. The worst victim of this is the brand spanking new Bond theme, played on every trailer and merchandising cash in for miles around, is totally dropped from the film, only making an appearance for the end credits. The fact that they took one of the single greatest aspects of the Bond franchise and left it out of every key scene in the film, and then used it for the "To be continued"-esq ending speaks volumes.
This is a great film, but the last act angered me so much that it dropped it from a 10 to an 7, and then once i had a little time to cool down, back up to an 8. When asked what i thought of the film during the closing credits, just three words sprang to mind... Mission Impossible Three. The director has taken an amazing concept, turned it int a great film, and then messed up at the very last minute. Maybe, given time, I will be able to forgive this (the same hope i have for X-Men 3), but for now the last act seriously effects the feel of the entire film. And until such time, this remains a spectacular, but flawed, movie. They have made such an effort to demonstrate that this is the first of a new series... lets just hope they can follow it through.