I went to see the new James Bond film last night, “Casino Royale” — a fast-paced action flick of the like we have not had from the Bond franchise for too long.
I am a longtime Bond fan who, sometime midway through the Roger Moore years, thanks to the obsession with gadgets and a softening of bond’s character — he became a bit of a snarky, effete spy whose vicious streak was on the wane. I missed the Dalton years — which was lucky, from what I’m told — and caught most of the Brosnan films on TV. Brosnan somehow brought back some of the Connery edge (that biting will to violence, that bit of sadism that allowed Connery to be more than the dandy that Moore became), but not enough — and the increasingly dopey stories strained credulity even more than the Roger Moore-era.
All that is water under the bridge now. The new Bond rocks. Flat out rocks. This film is stripped of gadetry, relying on brute force and speed. Daniel Craig is the most physical Bond going, full of menace, and the movie is loaded with chase sequences and explosions.
Bond sweats and bleeds; he runs, jumps and fights. There is dust and mud and a vicious torture scene in which a knotted rope is used to do the damage (compare with the cockamamie contraption to which Brosnan was strapped in… in … I can’t remember which film, but that should say a lot by itself).
The film also nods at its predecessors — turning the cliched punchlines into new jokes, giving the audience a glimpse into how Bond’s personality develops. This is an origin story, more psychologically complex than the previous movies, the dark edge, the mistrust, the gleeful sadism — you can sense it coming.
There are flaws — the love sequence that covers a chunk of the back end of the film, while necessary, is too long and could have been tightened — and the plot stretches the limits, though it never crosses the line in the way that the Brosnan movies did or that Moore’s Bond did in “Moonraker.”
Overal, this was one thrilling ride and should re-energize the moribund franchise. It did for me.
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Hank Kalet 