Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Sean who?, 24 Jan 2009
As one of the only 12 people who was genuinely delighted at Daniel Craig's casting when it was announced , I must admit I was more than a little worried about Casino Royale. Not the kind of paranoia that those newcomers who'd never experience the changing of the guard the series goes through every decade or the staggeringly venomous hate-mongering of the more fanatical Brosnan fans who felt compelled to start libellous hate-sites, though. After all those months of arguing that he was the perfect choice for the role (especially after some of the more moronic suggestions), was I setting myself up for a fall if he turned in a disappointing performance? Similarly there was the film itself. While the producers were making all the right noises about going back to basics, they'd done exactly the same with Licence To Kill and chickened out to deliver a sub-Roger Moore effort with Wayne Newton as a comedy relief villain, inept ninjas, pointless gadgets, laughable violence and monster truck stunts. Too often in the past the franchise had been over-reliant on the goodwill generated by the earlier films, rehashing earlier vehicles to decreasing returns secure in the knowledge that the audience would turn up anyway. Take away the Bond brand, and too many post-OHMSS entries simply wouldn't have stood up to scrutiny in the marketplace on their own merits: Bond had become a tradition, a ritual like going home for the holidays that you knew was never going to be as good as it was when you were a kid but which you still went through out of a mixture of hope and obligation.
I needn't have worried. Not only is it the best Bond film in 37 years, it's as if the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan years never happened. After Brosnan's surprisingly lazy and slightly seedy turn in DAD, Craig delivers the most physical Bond since Lazenby, but this time matched by the acting chops to make the most of the best script the series has had in decades - at once plot and character led - as the rookie blunt instrument bulldozes his way through his mission until emotional awakening and betrayal starts to finesse him into the Bond we knew from the Connery days. Brosnan never could have delivered this kind of performance, either physically or emotionally, and, truth be told, neither could Connery in his prime: Craig is the first one to convince you that he's not a movie star or an actor but that he really IS James Bond.
The updating of the plot from the Cold War era to a post 9/11 world works surprisingly well, with the first act managing to provide a convincing motive for the high stakes poker game centrepiece while also providing a couple of superb action scenes that don't become too absurd and serve the plot in a series where in the past the plot was too often an excuse for the action. The much-criticised change from baccarat to poker is a smart one too. Where Baccarat is purely a game of luck (as Fleming himself found out when he went bust in three hands trying out the novel's premise on a Nazi spy), poker actually involves both strategy and psychology, making for more satisfying drama and tension.
There is, sadly, one concession to gadgetry that veers into the absurd - c'mon, who keeps a defibrillator in their glove compartment? - and is an unwelcome reminder of the days when old Roge would get out of a scrape with his buzz saw wristwatch or his projectile dart cufflinks thanks to lazy writing, but elsewhere it settles for using existing technology (most of it manufactured by Sony for some reason that escapes me) rather than veering into total fantasy. And it's good to see a Bond who needs hospitalisation after the villain goes Quasimodo on his nuts with a bell rope. The film's final sequence promises one helluva follow-up, and one can only hope the producers don't lose their nerve and throw it all away the way they did with Diamonds Are Forever. The real James Bond is indeed back.
While the 2-disc DVD was a disappointment by the standards of the previous EON entries, this three-disc deluxe edition goes some way to making up for it, though it's annoying to have to double-dip when many of these features were ready to go more than a year ago. Aside from redesigned menus, the only additions to the first disc are the two audio commentaries, with the second disc the same as the two disc edition - three puff pieces from the film's theatrical release and an updated version of the Bond Girls Are Forever documentary. For significant new features, you need to go to the third disc - a number of new featurettes, storyboard comparisons and deleted scenes. There are still ommissions (where are the trailers?), but it's not a bad hand, especially if you're a first-time buyer.
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