Casino Royale

My interest in James Bond died the day I saw Pierce Brosnan shoot a machinegun. Gone were the careful headshots of a man who was an expert with his pistol. Replacing that deadly accuracy was frenetic scenes, random gunfire, and Bond bending the laws of reality. The Bond films had become a parody of themselves.

Enter Casino Royale, which makes up for the shambling travesty that was the Casino Royale Bond spoof. Daniel Craig takes on the role of Bond as a newbie, a newbie who is a ruthless killer. Gone are the delicate acrobatics that were the trademark of other Bonds. This Bond is a hulking brute, smashing through walls, ruthlessly shooting people, and otherwise achieving his missions through sheer brute force. It seems jarring at first, but this is the origin of Bond, from thug to international assassin.

The plot, bound by the rules of the original novel, doesn't entirely make sense. Why the entire world, including both the U.S. and British authorities, feel that beating a criminal at a card game is the best way to coerce him is beyond me. But if you're willing to buy into that fact (a requisite, really, for the spy genre where nothing is ever so simple and direct) then the film has a certain cadence to it that really enthralls.

Until the end. The part where, we are led to believe, Bond is going to settle down with Vesper Lynd, a treasury agent, in Venice. Yeah, right.

About ten minutes could have been cut from this scene alone. We get that Bond is enamored with Lynd, that he wants to give it all up for her, but after the torture, the shooting, the gambling, the chasing, the movie becomes something of a snore until it picks up again. And then we're off to the beginning of another movie, with no resolution whatsoever.

Casino Royale is a much improved film, but it's the foundation for the Bond mythology, and as such it breaks previous expectations and struggles to establish new ones. It's much better than the Bond films that went before it, but they set the bar pretty low. As a book-end to Quantum of Solace, Casino Royale can't be really appreciated without seeing the two movies back-to-back.