Review by Vives Anunciacion
Directed by Martin Campbell
Based on the character created by Ian Fleming
Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green
144 minutes/ PG 13
Sony Pictures/ Columbia Pictures
*** 1/2 (3 1/2 stars)
After 21 outings, it still represents the grand male fanstasy – crisp clothing, hot cars, lots of gadgets and hot women. But Casino Royale also reshapes James Bond to a new level of seriousness since Timothy Dalton played a darker Bond in License to Kill (1989). Welcome the lean, mean, but emotional, machine.
Of all actors who delivered the introduction, “The name is Bond, James Bond.” Daniel Craig’s physique makes him the most believable person to accomplish the physically demanding missions of Agent 007 (let’s see – Pierce Brosnan was too pretty, Roger Moore too stiff; Sean Connery was great too, but first we had to understand his Scottish. That leaves George Lazenby who quit after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and Timothy Dalton who’s as charismatic as a grandfather clock onscreen.)
But credit Dalton for creating the darker side of Bond, who in Moore’s time was a bumbling chick magnet, then a gadget freak in Brosnan’s. For the longest time, the image of the dapper, gentlemanly super Secret Agent was established by Connery even in the first James Bond flick, Dr. No in 1962. Craig only had to improve on Dalton’s inner assassin to make this version of Bond the most emotionally vulnerable (but such is the trend with virtually all male bidas in recent movies.)
In Casino Royale, Bond’s first mission as a double-o agent takes his bomb-terror trail from the Bahamas to a high stakes poker game in Montenegro, resulting in the crackdown of a worldwide agency of terrorist money. Eva Green plays MI6 accountant Vesper Lynd, the only woman that matters in this edition of James Bond. This Bond barely uses any gadget, drives a car once only to smash it in a few minutes and sleeps with only one woman. Sheer mind and muscle.
Great movie, and a successful reboot of a franchise, like it was an edition of the Jason Bourne series. Too bad it had to glamorize gambling.
0 comments:
Post a Comment