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... OK, now DON'T READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO ENJOY CASINO ROYALE!! Now, I've avoided all of the reviews because I didn't want anything ruined for myself. I am a pretty big Bond fan and have all of the films in my video collection. Personally, while the last few Bond movies were pretty weak, I didn't see the need for a new version of Bond to be done. I think it would have been smarter to have just let the franchise go. After seeing Casino Royale I think this is twice as good an idea. My Main Problem with Casino Royale... It feels like they wanted to make "a more realistic Bond movie" (whatever the hell that is)--however, their definition of that seems to have been taking a Jack Ryan movie (like Clear and Present Danger) and mashing it together with a crappy, already-made Bond film like Die Another Day. What they got was a very messy, cluttered, contrived, at times confusing movie I would title "The Bourne Wannabe." The film ends up being incredibly uneven, with weak attempts at humanization and even weaker attempts to make the action "more realistic." It's also wickedly derivative of previous Bond films (and other action movies as well) and I couldn't help but think of those other films while watching this one. Kinda sad, really. Oh yeah and there are, like, no hot women in this. I mean, there are three--but compared to most Bond films? There are no hot women in this--and he only beds one of them. I think the filmmakers are trying to get more women in the theaters. The sad thing is, fewer men will come because they'll know they're not going to see some hotties. I mean, HELL, this is a BOND MOVIE. But more on this later... The Good: The Acting, The Score (sorta) First off, let me say that I LOVED DANIEL CRAIG. This is not James Bond from any of the earlier films. This is a Bond much closer to the books and much farther from the elegant, stylish playboy of the earlier Bond films. Craig's Bond is a thinking, blunt instrument. I like this direction and I like the way Craig handled this direction. It was nice seeing Bond more bruised and bloody, too. Eva Green is probably the most realistic Bond Woman ever. Sadly, she looks her best when she's wearing little or no make up and resembles a child trying to look "sophisticated" (in finger-quotes) when the film clearly wants her to be a smoking hottie. Aside from her final scene of the movie, I liked all of her choices as an actor. I believed everything she (and Craig) expressed, even if the dialog was for crap. Now, during the film, I found David Arnold's score to be fun, John-Barry-esque (John Barry scored the best Bond films, in my humble opinion) and much less derivative of Arnold's scores from earlier Bond films. However, I've since listened to the soundtrack on it's own and I think it sucks worse than the any of his others. Seriously, it's just bad. There were bits in it that were so familiar (aside from the Bond theme, I mean) that I expected the music to suddenly kick into those earlier scores. It just sucked. However, as I watched the movie, it seemed to work much better. What Didn't Work for Me: Everything Else Where to begin? Like I said, I haven't read any of the other reviews so I don't know what they say. I did get the gist from headlines and some people who had read the reviews, however. So, the positive reviews say this is a more realistic Bond film--a grittier, more human Bond? I didn't see much of that. What I did see were clumsy, ineffective attempts at that, though. Everything Else Part 1: The Action Scenes Let's take the action scenes. The very first action scene was fine--it depicts Bond's first kill. A bit more violent than it needed to be, but fine. It was shot in black and white (see? GRITTY!). The next big action scene would have required tag-team Olympic marathon runners with the proportionate strength and agility of a spider to actually perform it in real time and not get killed in the process. Remember how shocking it was to see Yoda rip off all of Spider-Man's moves in Star Wars: Episode 2: Attack of the Clones? That's what this was like. While Bond was slightly less agile, the guy he was chasing was a freaking monkey and he also happened to be black, but I'll get into the racist stuff later. The other action scenes reminded me of, well, other action scenes from other movies. The truck chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark comes to mind most easily. There was no car chase in this movie and that earlier chase scene I mention above (which was on foot) was just a cross between every roof-top chase scene you've seen before and the Tom & Jerry cartoons that take place on a construction site. The action scenes were bland, derivative and borderline-boring. Everything Else Part 2: The Gadgets One of the reasons I have an iPod, a Nintendo DS, a laptop, a pocket-sized video camera and a cell phone on me at almost all times is because of James Bond. When I was a kid, my dad introduced me to the Bond franchise by describing Bond as a lady's man who was a spy and had all these neat gadgets. The gadgets were the first thing I'd look for in a Bond film. The gadgets in Casino Royale sucked. When Bond uses a "high tech" computer to show him on a map where a character had called on a cell phone, the effects sequence took so long I decided I could get there about ten times faster using FlashEarth.Com. When Bond is tracking a bug he's planted on a bad guy, he uses a simple, handheld GPS device. BIG DEAL. The BUS I commute on every day to work has similar device to track itself. When Bond gets injected with a tracking chip by M, all it takes is a thug's knife to dig it out. I was thinking he should have swallowed it or had it surgically implanted instead of just injected. There were no cool cars in this, either. In fact, in one shot, Bond drives a Ford. Bond's official cool car (which was actually pretty bland for a "hot car") only had one gadget that was interesting. An auto-opening glove box with a pistol and defibrillator inside. The defibrillator looked pretty damned Fisher-Price, too. Perhaps Sony should have done yet another product placement deal for the film and had their Sony Brand "My First Defibrillator" in the shot at all times. Speaking of product placements, Bond uses Sony Vaio laptops (something tells me Bond would probably be a Mac guy--for the security, if nothing else), Sony Ericsson cell phones and both made me wonder where the gadgets had gone. I don't need anything hardcore scifi, but something more advanced than what I already own, myself would have been nice. Everything Else Part 3: Romancing with Bond Yowza--remember in GoldenEye? There was that scene where Pierce Brosnan's Bond is sitting with Izabella Scorupco and she has some clunky dialog that asks Bond why he won't let down his wall (or something like that) and Bond clunkily replies: "That wall keeps me alive" (or something like that)? Imagine that scene (and dialog worse than that) dropped here and there throughout the movie. While I believed they were in love, I couldn't believe what they were saying to one another! Vesper: "If all that was left of you was your smile and your little finger, you'd be more of a man than any man I've ever met in my life... but you won't let me past your armor." Bond: "I've got no armor left. You've stripped me of it." That dialog just makes me want to sigh...IN DISGUST! I mean, who wrote this shit? William Shakespeare? What kind of crap is this? Mystery Subtext Theater 3000? Because that's what most of the dialog between the two of them was--subtext. AKA things people wouldn't normally say to one another. So, the romance didn't really work, either. Everything Else Part 4: The Plot I tried to summarize the plot of this movie for my wife on the way home from the theater but I really couldn't do it. Twelve hours later, I'll try again: "Bond, after being forced to kill a bomb maker, follows clues left on cell phones (!) that lead him to an international criminal who just happened to decide to win money in a very high-stakes poker game to pay back investors whose money he lost when Bond foiled (by accident) a plan to make airline stocks drop through the floor by blowing up a really big passenger plane." Wow--even that was difficult to put together--let alone follow. Now imagine that run-on sentence was two-hours and twenty-five minutes long (with twenty minutes of trailers in front of it) and you'll see why this plot was convoluted as hell. When the bad guy is killed (they always get killed in the uninspired Bond films) the film keeps going. As a result, you know that bad things are still to come and by "bad" I mean predictable. Being that this is supposed to be Bond's first mission as 007, we have to find out the hard way why he's such a womanizer. I found the reason for this most unsatisfying and it made me long for the last Bond film with good character development: On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Everything Else Part 5: The One Other Thing They Got Right, They Should Have Gotten Wrong Part A: Female Stereotypes The idea behind this film was to reinvent James Bond for the twenty-first century. However, still fully intact in the Bond universe are racial, physical and gender stereotypes. Let's look at the women first. Woman #1: Random "ethnic" hottie. She's absolutely gorgeous--black hair, olive skin, gorgeous body--Bond uses her to get info on her husband who is...somehow important, I can't remember how/why. The next time we see her she's been tortured and killed (Bond didn't even get with her!). Way to have a hottie only be used for a bridge to get Bond to some info and then have her die. Woman #2: Lead bad guy's hot blond girlfriend. She's definitely hot, but definitely useless. The more interesting Bond-Bad-Guy-Women have always been bad-asses. Goldfinger's Pussy Galore was an ace pilot who knew judo, The Spy Who Loved Me's Agent Triple X (NOT VIN DIESEL) was a hot Russian spy, For Your Eyes Only featured a vengeful, crossbow-toting Grecian hottie, Octupussy had Bond score with a number of women who were part of a circus of female assassins, GoldenEye had Famke Jansen as a sadomasochistic assassin, and so on... but in this? She's useless and doesn't even seem to mind when her man fails to protest when a couple of his pissed off investors threaten to cut her hand off. Oh and Bond doesn't get near this chick--ever. Often, Bond will bag the bad guy's women just to get the bad guy's goat, but not in this film. And when she has her hand threatened? She just whimpers and acts all scared, yet she's got the confidence to later walk around in this skimpy, leather number. Woman #3: The love interest. Generic pretty white woman (though the most realistic of the Bond women, as I mentioned above) who represents the "girl next door" urge present in all men. The sweet, innocent, weak woman who finds herself thrown into His dangerous life who must be cared, nurtured and fathered by the Hero. This is definitely something the film should have gotten wrong. This shit is sooooo OLD. "OH, I'M SO SHOCKED TO SEE YOU KILL SOME ONE RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!! OH!!" Sheesh. I don't need her to be unfazed by seeing two guys get killed right in front of her by the man she thinks she might be falling in love with--but to have Bond find her in the shower, in a fetal position crying about trying to get the blood off of her hands (Shakespeare again!)? That was pretty depressingly uninteresting. Women can be strong through their fear, ya know. Everything Else Part 5: The One Other Thing They Got Right, They Should Have Gotten Wrong Part B: Physical Stereotypes One thing that I find boring is when bad guys seem to be evil because of their physical deformities. Maybe I'm sensitive to this because my father-in-law is a disabled rights lawyer. Regardless, it bugs me when people who look different are the bad guys. Enter Le Chiffre. He's the creepy white guy with the Hitler hairstyle, the one marble-for-any-eye (yep, that old chestnut) that cries blood and has asthma (inhaler and all). Clearly, he is evil. Now, I'm not saying that deformities don't cause people to be bitter and vengeful on occasion, but can't we get a bit more creative with the bad guys? I mean, why not throw an albino in there like the uber-(not-)original DaVinci Code? Then, the bomb maker in the beginning--not only is he black but he's horribly burned. The make-up sucked, too. I've seen burn victims up close and this guy just had crap on his face. The theory was that he was horribly scarred when a bomb he was working on went off--that's funny, his arms are still intact. Was he building a bomb made of magicians' flash paper? Finally, there's a one-eyed man who happens to be physically slight--he's a skinny, kinda-creepy-looking guy who wears glasses with one lens blacked out to cover his missing eye. You'll never guess how he dies--a nail to his missing eye. Well, they couldn't have Bond putting a nail in his good eye because then they'd be ripping off Kill Bill! It's always nice to see films that fill us with the fear of "the other." Speaking of which, let's talk race! Weeeee! Everything Else Part 5: The One Other Thing They Got Right, They Should Have Gotten Wrong Part C: Racial Stereotypes Now, my wife has already told me I'm reading into this--but I don't think I am. I'm simply looking at the elements portrayed in the film. Keep reading and see if you agree. So, I'm sitting here, barely twelve hours after seeing the film, and I can't think of Bond killing anyone but black people. I guess there was a scene in Venice where he kills some white folks, but the most obvious, violent deaths are black people. The deaths of both the main bad guy and the secondary bad guy (both white) happen off-screen while the deaths of the white men in Venice occur in the middle of a lot of craziness. Meanwhile, the deaths of two African rebels (I guess they were rebels) are violent and very much on-screen and are essentially unjustified. Sure, the two Africans are harassing the bad guy and leave his hotel room only to spot Bond's tiny little ear piece (!) and overhear it's transmission of the bad guy's words (!!) and instantly assume Bond is out to get them. So, Bond HAD to kill them! Don't you see? Bond's not racist! He was acting in self-defense! But the Africans attacked Bond on such a flimsy pre-text and they attacked him so savagely I must then assume the screenwriter is racist (and the director, too, since he left it in the movie). See, they've contrived a way to force the white Hero to kill the savage black men violently on-screen. The first big action sequence of the movie ends with Bond shooting a black man and then shooting some sort of tank that causes a whole bunch of black men to die on-screen in an explosion that knocks parts of a small building on them. So, there's that "healthy" fear of "the other" once again. You may want to tell me: ThePete, it's just an action movie, you should really just relax. To that, I say: I am relaxed. Look at all the other Bond films (which I've all enjoyed in their racism/sexism/physical-stereotyping). If they involve any minorities, they're either exotic women Bond bags or they're people Bond has to kill to further the British (white) agenda. Specifically, take a look at the negative black stereotypes in Live and Let Die and let us not forget You Only Live Twice where Bond not only trains to become a ninja in a couple of weeks but is also made to look Japanese! As if the Welsh Sean Connery could pass for a Nihonjin. Earlier Bond films are renowned for their sexism. Usually, we get some titillation out of it, though. In this, gone is 90% of the "holy crap, she's hot!" moments found in most other Bond films. The title sequence features not a SINGLE woman. Finally, the Bond franchise is littered with examples of physical deformities equating to evil. Dr. No had a robot hand. Goldfinger was fat. Blofeld, in You Only Live Twice was bald (as he always is) and had a scar over one marble-eye (see? OLD chestnut!) In Thunderball, Largo had one eye. Live and Let Die had a one-armed black guy with a robot arm sporting a pair of scissors at the end (black AND deformed, WOW!). Man With the Golden Gun had a bad guy with three nipples and a midget sidekick. Jaws, the thug with the steel teeth shows up in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Sure, there are a fair share of Bond films that don't use a deformed bad guy, but the point is that, along with racism and sexism, physical stereotyping was not reinvented for the twenty-first century--just carried over. Oh wait! I just realized--there is one white character who has a violent death on screen--but it's a woman! D'OH! Now, I'm not saying that any time a woman is weak on screen, a black person is depicted as being savage, or a wheel-chair-bound person commits a crime I walk out of the theater. I think these elements can be used in modern cinema, I just think they should be used in an interesting way. Characters should turn their disabilities into advantages--perhaps a wheelchair that is armed with weapons or allowed the user to climb stairs, trees and even some walls. Or hey--why not make the deformed guy an ally of Bond's? Like, in the novels Bond's CIA friend, Felix Leiter, has his legs devoured by sharks, yet later in the series, he's still a useful character. Women can be scared, but do they always have to react to life's harsh realities by acting like little girls? Can't they work through their fear on their own? Or get Bond's help in a less frail and weak way? And can we treat non-white races with respect and not write any of them as one-note savages, like the Africans in Casino Royale? I'll always enjoy the earlier Bond films (well, most of them) despite their racist, sexist, physical-stereotyping ways. All films are a reflection of the time in which they were made. The racism, and so on, of those earlier Bond films reflected the failings of our own society, even when the film makers weren't aware of it. Now, we can look back and enjoy those older films but understand that movies made today should be a bit more progressive about those same issues. Now, before I fully finish this anti-Casino Royale rant, I do want to point out one of the things I love about Bond films. THE WOMEN. To me, I think feminine sexuality is as powerful as male masculinity. I get so annoyed when women are looked down upon by other women when ever they use their appearance to get their way. In my mind that's like getting upset when men get into a fist fight or simply look imposing. So, using that argument, I should be annoyed every time I see Daniel Craig walk into frame. When men want something, they use force to take it. When women want something they use their appearance to get it. It seems, to me, that this is the way our species works. So, getting rid of the T&A in Bond movies seems like slicing out half of what was good about them in the first place. So, when there are only three women in Casino Royale and they barely get to show off that they're women, it seems like a waste of time--or at least half-a-waste of time. Like I said above--THIS IS A BOND MOVIE. Of course, the catch is, in the end, Casino Royale is not a Bond movie. I know I sound like one of those people who said back in 1987 that Star Trek: The Next Generation was not Star Trek, but that's how I feel. This new sex-lite, blunt-force Bond franchise is not one I look forward to seeing expand. While this does sadden me, I do know that all good things must come to an end. Yes, this movie was fun but I'd rather see another Jason Bourne movie before I pay $12.50 to see another Bond film in the theater.
Orignal From: Casino Royale...eh...
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