Vol. 4, No. 4, April 2007
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DVD Review
Casino Royale Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen. Directed by Martin Campbell
After 20 films the James Bond series—the longest-running franchise in movie history—was in need of an overhaul. Weighed down with high-tech gadgets, Bond was reduced to battling cartoon villains bent on dominating the world. It was a formula that always made money, but had grown stale.
Thank the producers for Daniel Craig, an unconventional Bond for a post-modern age. This is a rock-and-roll Bond, stripped down, reckless. An adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first book in the Bond series, Casino Royale shows our hero earning his double-00 status. He’s unseasoned, a bit arrogant, prone to mistakes. Bond is still the coolest guy on the block, but he hasn’t quite learned how to separate his ego from the dangerous work he does.
While still looking good in a suit, Daniel Craig brings a bruised, gritty realism to the character. He shatters the armor-plated glossiness of the old Bond, and the entire picture seems to hang on his interesting face, which is just shy of handsome. He looks like Steve McQueen after he’s been in a bar fight.
This time around Bond’s nemesis is an international financier with ties to terrorism. The plot is intricate and engaging. There are plenty of action sequences, but the main battle takes place around a high-stakes poker table; not in some hidden lair.
Bond also meets his match in Vesper Lynd (the lovely Eva Green), the first Bond girl to be his intellectual equal. Vesper resists the secret agent’s considerable charms, and their sexual chess game offers some of the best dialogue in the franchise’s history.
The relationship between Bond and Vesper drags down the second half of the picture. This being a Bond movie, things pick up at the end when our hero is called on to do what he does best, eliminating bad guys.
Sean Connery is still the best Bond, but Daniel Craig does breathe new life into the series, and that itself is enough to keep us coming back.
