Casino Royale kicks butt, but not Connery's butt

Rating: 6/10 (5 January 2007)

The 2006 Bond redux Casino Royale kicks butt in several crucial cinematic departments. Daniel Craig's Bond is strong, saturnine, and sexy. Eva Green (as Vesper Lynd) is an approximately beautiful Bondgirl, but a fully competent and handy ally to the super-spy-to-be. And the action sequences(especially the opening Madagascar chase)are the best-edited, best-conceived of the series. So Casino Royale kicks butt. . . but not Sean Connery's butt. The Connery card still trumps the Craig card in perfectly blending style and ruthlessness. This is the fault of the script, which opts for a little too much "realism". There is too much emphasis on the assassin side of young Bond, making it hard to believe he's an Oxford-educated urbanite. Craig's attempts at a seamless transition are admirable, but he's still two different characters: the "blunt instrument" and "the best card player in the service". The attempts at "realism" also fail to deliver a memorable villain. Le Chiffre is a dull accountant who is barely menacing in appearance only, devoid of a grand scheme or even a class A henchman. Caternia Murino(easily the sexier of the two Bondgirls)is not around nearly enough. And stodgy "M"'s normal exposition phase is grossly overextended into almost every scene, explaining why the bad guys blew up or beat up something. All in all, Casino Royale completes its mission: to overhaul and extend the life of the franchise. But it(intentionally?)lacks the fluid panache of Sean Connery's earlier Bond entries.