CASINO ROYALE

Director: Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Verticle Limit)
Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench

James Bond is dead. Finally. It's been a zig-zagging path to the grave for 007, but I think he's finally been buried. Sean Connery, that's the James Bond we'll all remember. Roger Moore was also defintely bond, even though his plots became more and more ridiculous over time. He might have been a step behind Connery, but he was still Bond. I won't even mention Dalton. And Lazenby who? Anyway, Brosnan seemed like he should have been Bond, but the scriptwriters determined he needed to be updated for our "modern" times. They were wrong. The same goes for Craig, he seems like he should be Bond, but the script said otherwise. This time scriptwriter Paul Haggis (et al) turned Bond into every other action star out there today. This script was completely interchangable with Mission Impossible III and The Bourne movies. This was not Bond. Bond is dead.

However, despite the lack of Bond, Casino Royale is still a thoroughly entertaining action/spy flick. It's a pretty darn good Mission Impossible or Bourne Supremecy movie. Nonetheless, I miss Bond. I liked him. He was the familiar mysoginist, charming, rugged and suave, that we all want to be (deep deep down). This guy in Casino Royale they kept calling James Bond, well, he actually fell in love with a pretty girl. He wuvved his wittle woman. Bond doesn't do that. He also got his, er "manhood" tortured by the bad guys (I'm not kidding. It was quite possibly the most NOT BOND scene I could have imagined.) Surprisingly, he's also some kind of Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon nearly-flying superhero able to leap tall buildings while chasing an even more dextrous bad guy. This was a very good almost Matrix-like action scene to start off Casino Royale. But it wasn't Bond.

The plot of Casino Royale is a retelling of how James Bond got his start. He begins as an egocentric spy who (eventually) has to play the bad guy in a high-stakes poker match. Helping him along (as the hot British treasury official) is the extremely hot Eva Green. I'm not giving anything away by telling you they fall in love. Ahhh. All of this is periodically punctuated by hyperkinetic action sequences. I won't bother with the rest of the plot details. They're not important. There are some twists I should mention, but not give away, and in the end we see how Bond comes to no longer trust women, or anyone for that matter. This is a story that's supposed to tell us why Bond is a womanizer in his later life. I don't believe a word of it though. This story doesn't tell me anything about Bond, because it's not Bond.

In the end though, if you're able to separate yourself from the notion that you're supposed to be watching a Bond picture, you'll see a very good action/spy movie. It's quite entertaining, alternating between action sequences and the quiet intesity of the poker game to the twists at the end. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I still wish it was a Bond movie though.

Standouts: A very solid effort across the board, except for the script claiming this guy was James Bond.
Blowouts: Not too much, really. It was an entertaining little pic.

Grade: B+