Casino Bore-All

Rating: 5/10 (10 October 2009)

People have hailed this film as return to form for the franchise, when it fact it departs in major and detrimental ways from the form which built the Bond film franchise.
Craig is fine as the actor, but no one has come close to Connery yet.
Any true fan of the Bond films measures each film against the first few with Connery. You can't help it. You find yourself thinking "how would Connery play this scene?" or "How would this have been written in the 60s?" This is a good measuring rod, as those early films are classics for a reason. They were grounded in some kind of reality - the world of international espionage. Ever since the franchise went full bonkers with Moonraker, Cubby Broccoli and the subsequent franchise producers have struggled to find the right tone and bring the craziness back into something resembling the real world.
In journalism there is something called a Gross Factual Error. A reporter submits a story that spells a person's name wrong, or gets a date or location wrong. Journalism cannot tolerate such errors, getting such data right is the most fundamental exercise of the craft.
With Casino Royale there are several Gross Factual Errors that negate the film as a true Bond film. The first is a trend they've done in the franchise with Dame Judy Dench as M. They have personalized the relationship between M and Bond and this is very very lame. In the early films M was clearly Bond's boss and maintained a professional distance from his operative. Again and again the filmmakers have in recent films built a touchy-feely Oprah-esquire dynamic between M and Bond and it is simply anathema to the series.
A minor continuity error in Casino Royale with big story implications is when the cocktail waitress picks up the martinis from the bar and handles them by the rim to place them on the tray. This violates basic health principles and no professional (certainly not at a ritzy European casino) would make such a Gross Factual Error in drink service. A sharp eye like Bond would see the prints on the edge of the glass and refuse it. Craig's Bond did not. He was slipped a Mickey. Would that happen to a Connery Bond in a public place? Maybe alone with a girl he was going to have sex with, but not in a public place.
The most glaring error of all - and what negates Casino Royale utterly is the fight Craig gets into with the bad guys in the hallway of the hotel and in the stairwell. They were not his enemy. Connery-Bond would have noted them but he would not have engaged them. You don't waste your resources (physical exertion, danger from being injured or killed) fighting people not directly tied to your mission objective. These villains were tangental to his objectives. A Gross Gross Error. Further, the time-frame of events is ridiculous. The poker game goes on and on and on and Bond comes and goes from the game again and again. The whole point to building a climax to a story is to have a high-tension finale. You cannot sustain drama if you continually cut away from it. Terrible storytelling.
Despite the success the film had with style, production values, the casting of Craig and excellent exterior camera work, it was not a true Bond film and must be regarded as a failure.