Other Reviews in this Series.
Director: Martin Campbell
Writers: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis
Cast: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright
Runtime: 144 mins.
2006
Casino Royale is a reboot of an everchanging character. I'm no Bond expert; I've only seen one non-Craig Bond movie (Goldfinger), but I've read Film Crit Hulk's book about the franchise. It's clear that while Bond maintains certain signifiers and character traits (he dresses well, uses his own name, beds the ladies, etc.), each iteration of the character has been fluid in how exactly Bond's character is played. Some interpretations have been more debonair, some more action oriented, some more comedic. Even within actors' arcs the tone of each film swayed drastically between grounded intrigue and out there absurdity. Here we are decades later, and in returning to Bond's first mission Casino Royale tasks itself with answering the auspicious and difficult question: Who is James Bond?
Seconds into the film Casino Royale stakes its claim and makes its statement of intent in two beautifully intercut black and white scenes. These are Bond's first two kills, one of which leads to the other. The second kill is suave, witty, and stylish. Bond is waiting for the double agent as he enters his office. Bond has emptied the bullets from the gun in his desk. Bond is always in control. This is a classic James Bond scene.
Meanwhile, Bond's first kill is like nothing we've ever seen in this franchise. Craig strides into a nasty overlit bathroom with a sense of cold purpose, and he starts a brawl brutal beyond the likes of which we are used to in a PG-13 movie. Faces are smashed and bloodied, mirrors are smashed, stalls are smashed, toilets are smashed, sinks are smashed. Even the most solid edifices are breakable in Bond's new world. This scene has nothing to do with the elegant, efficient combat of former Bonds. Here Bond is, as M (Judi Dench) later calls him, a blunt instrument, and the scene takes great pains to communicate the great pains involved in this line of work. This perfectly executed fight lets the audience know that this isn't your grandpa's James Bond anymore. Casino Royale shares responsibility for creating modern studios' fixation with the "gritty reboot," but at least in this case it was entirely called for, as a healthy dose of realism was something that Bond desperately needed to keep his character fresh.
Thus Casino Royale succeeds in its twofold impossible task: It constructs a fresh and instantly iconic version of the character, while simultaneously deconstructing every iteration of the character that has come before. The movie gestures to all that womanizing, sociopathy, hypermasculinized violent behavior that you have always seen Bond display, and provides an anchor for it. We are given a single opportunity to see a man who is recognizably Bond, yet also still retains a hint of his humanity. As such, this may go down in history as the greatest Bond film ever, in no small part because it is necessarily the only one in which James Bond has a real, meaningful character arc.
Reframing Bond to make him into a human being is a more revolutionary choice than anything short of recasting him as a minority.* Fitting that at the center of that humanity should be perhaps the only Bond girl who has really and truly meant something to Bond's character. Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) shows up halfway through the movie, as would any other disposable Bond girl we expect James to start banging and leave hanging. Yet something different happens here. Vesper resists James' advances. In fact, she sees right through them and fires back with quips just as potent and a great deal more refined. All of this is encapsulated in her introduction, a debriefing on a train. Vesper is something of a glorified government accountant, and she is in charge of the significant funds that will be used in a poker game between Bond, the villain, and a handful of other VIPs. Vesper thinks this is a terrible idea, and when James challenges her reluctance they spent the rest of the scene psychoanalyzing each other in a fascinating tennis match across gender, class, and professional boundaries.
*The recent clamor has been that the next Bond should be a black man, or perhaps a white woman. Putting aside the fact that these are the only two minority categories that studios think of when they try to inject "diversity" into their properties (look at the Marvel movies: two black guys and two white women on the Avengers, with another black guy and white woman coming down the pipeline), a black or female Bond would be a fascinating inversion of Bond's traditional issues with colonialism and sexism, respectively.
Traditionally the subtext of James Bond has stated that Bond can only be in love with himself. That's why this story choice is so perfect. James falls in love with Vesper because she is the lady version of him.
Vesper is the quintessential Bond girl. She's sexy, smart, tough, self-reliant. She even saves James' life in the movie's most harrowing sequence of suspense, a perfectly structured restart-the-heart countdown. More importantly, and prepare for a very deliberately selected cliche here, she saves his life emotionally. By the end of the movie we see a Bond who is happy, content with his situation, and no longer requires the self-immolating perils of double-0 work. Obviously things cannot simply wrap up that way, as there could be no more Bonds if it had, so it's not much of a spoiler to say that everything he loves gets ripped away from him at the end. This is what makes Casino Royale a legitimate tragedy. For years people have been decrying the hypermasculinity, the racism, and most especially the rampant sexism of Britain's most famous superspy. Along comes Casino Royale to show us how exactly Bond came to be such a cultural degenerate, transforming that decades-long subtext into poignant text.
It's a masterstroke of storytelling, one of the only truly effective "prequels" I have ever seen. But the beauty and tragedy of it all is that we can never again have a Bond film so poignant, due to the definitive nature of James' character arc. The Craig Bonds would go on to do some interesting things, but on a pure story level nothing can top Casino.
In focusing on the romance and the metanarrative I've glossed over all sorts of aspects of the film that are certainly worth noting. I'll rapid fire a few here. The second action scene is perhaps even more iconic than the first, with Bond pursuing an acrobatic freerunner through a construction site. It's one of my favorite action scenes--each moment unfolds like a treacherous flower. Most importantly, it's one of the best examples I know of for establishing character through action. Each graceful leap of the runner is coupled with Bond's version of the same stunt, which generally involves barreling through walls or jerry-rigging some construction equipment in his favor. We see perfectly encapsulated Bond's greatest weapon: his tenacity.
The poker game at the crux of the narrative is long and slow, and I kind of love it. It's exactly antithetical to the sort of thing you would expect from a high octane Bond film. It's a bold choice that grounds the narrative and adds a great deal of excellent character moments. It really could do without the clunky "Hey Vesper Bond is trying to figure out the bad guy's tell right now" exposition happening in the background though.
This is not my original idea, I probably read it in HULK's book or some other Bond criticism, but Bond's hefty narrative arc in Casino Royale is only possible because Daniel Craig is the first James Bond who is also a talented and convincing naturalistic actor. I'm not saying he's the only good actor, just that the other Bond's had an otherworldly performance style that was meant to elevate Bond above us, into the realm of mythological action hero. Craig is different. He imbues Bond with all sorts of human moments. He can be wry, tender, and filled with all-consuming rage. He also sells a ball-related torture scene like nobody's business. To think his casting was decried because Craig has blond hair.
In bringing James back to his formative moment, the writers and filmmakers of Casino Royale made all the right choices. Unlike just about every other Bond film, this movie breaks the formula and populates its world with real characters in extreme situations. It's still stylish, suspenseful, and grandiose, but it also nails the series' one and only opportunity to ground all of that in a meaningful way.
4.5 / 5 BLOBS
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