Reinventing Bond

Rating: 9/10 (14 June 2007)

The long-running James Bond franchise gets a much-needed shot in the arm with "Casino Royale," a film which gives us, in the person of Daniel Craig, the least foppish, most rough-and-tumble 007 since the early days of Sean Connery. Here's a Bond who's more at home in jeans and a polo shirt than in a perfectly tailored Giorgio Armani tuxedo (though he isn't above wearing one, if the situation calls for it). Gone, too, are many of the high-tech gadgets and preposterous, over-the-top villains that had begun to push the series increasingly into the realm of fantasy and further away from reality.
As conceived by writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and the seemingly ubiquitous Paul Haggis, Craig's Bond also has a noticeably darker side to his personality. The authors have gone back to the source here, to Ian Fleming's first novel in the series, "Casino Royale." This has allowed the writers to re-invent Bond almost from scratch as it were, and, indeed, the first scene of the movie - filmed in appropriately old-school black-and-white - shows us Bond literally gunning for his promotion to double O status (an agent can become an 00 only after he's successfully dispatched two victims). Yet, despite this Bond's seeming indifference to human life, Craig brings a vulnerability and depth of character to the role that nicely counterbalance the dry cynicism, flippant tone and callous womanizing that are still crucial elements of the character's mystique and makeup. Yet, even in that latter category, this new Bond deviates from the old one by striking up a genuinely romantic relationship with the beautiful Vesper Lynd, nicely portrayed by Eva Green.
The main plot - in which Bond finds himself on the Riviera playing in a high-stakes poker game against a notorious small-arms dealer - is secondary to the tense action scenes, wry humor and moral dilemmas that make "Casino Royale" a triumph for director Martin Campbell as well.
After years of delivering one fine performance after another in a string of less high-profile but often very worthy films, it's gratifying to see Craig finally achieving the acclaim and stardom he so richly deserves with "Casino Royale." With the help of his fellow filmmakers, he has nearly single-handedly resurrected this moribund franchise and reminded us of just how good a Bond picture can actually be.