Brikar

"Casino Royale" is a taut, highly-entertaining action-thriller and a superb entry into the James Bond series. Naysayers, screw off - Daniel Craig is wonderful as the young James Bond, who earns his 00-status at the beginning of the movie with a brutal double assassination in gritty black and white. The opening features a cool twist on the usual "gun barrel" opening of James Bond adventures.

The movie is two and a half hours long, but moves with a decent pace. There's plenty of fantastic action sequences to counter the slower moments as Bond grows closer to his MI6 contact, Vesper Lynd. Lynd and Bond go to Casino Royale in Montenegro after a trail of terrorists leads them to a mysterious man named only Le Chiffre, "private banker to the world's terrorists." Bond, as MI6's best poker player, is assigned to clean LeChiffre out, and offer him protection from his clients in exchange for testimony.

This is a welcome change after gadget-laden world domination plots, space lasers, invisible cars and stolen nuclear weapons. "Casino Royale" is down to earth and gritty. There are no super weapons, no laser watches... the closest thing to a gadget in Bond's arsenal is a portable defibrilator stashed in the glove compartment of his car. What this also means is a noticeable lack of digital CG effects. Stunts and chases are all quite realistic, for the most part - the digital stuff is really quite well hidden, being so minimal. The action is far more brutal than ever before in a Bond film. The hand-to-hand fights are great, especially one encounter between Bond and a machete-wielding terrorist in a stairwell. A torture sequence about two-thirds of the way through the film is pretty harsh as well, and probably should have earned "Royale" an R rating instead of PG-13.

Daniel Craig is fantastic as the "blunt instrument" Bond, a young Bond with no refinement, who lets his ego get in the way of completing his mission. He'll charge into an embassy and blow it to hell, without regard for another nation's sovereignty... and he'll bet millions of dollars in a poker game when he gets pissed off. Over the course of the film, Bond must learn to become the suave, aloof secret agent we were used to in the other films, and Craig pulls off the transformation spectacularly. By the movie's last line, you know without a doubt that Daniel Craig IS James Bond.

Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name" title song is catchy, and shown over nifty graphics with a playing card theme. Characters are murdered with spades, fun stuff. David Arnold's score is vastly superior to his previous effort, "Die Another Day", which suffered from far too much electronic manipulation (and a horrid theme song by Madonna).

"Casino Royale" might be big and loud, but it's also smart - and ridiculously entertaining.

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Arik

I can't wait to see this movie.

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Bean

James Blonde..... Sorry, had to get it out of my system.

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"I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing."

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Space Goat

I hated the directions in which the James Bond producers wanted to take the character when I first heard about them. How dare they replace the sophisticated Pierce Brosnan with the Neanderthal Daniel Craig. How could they remove the neat gadgets and the megalomaniacal villains. They would be regurgitating License to Kill, which reduced James Bond to a narc cop and knocked the franchise into a seven-year hibernation.

Nevertheless, when Casino Royale finally arrived, it generated positive critical response and word of mouth. So I reneged on my intention to shun the movie; I saw it with my family on Thanksgiving.

How wonderfully wrong my fears turned out to be! The producers of James Bond haven't ruined the franchise, but resuscitated it. True, implausible enemies and wacky gadgets play no role in Casino Royale. But unlike License to Kill, it's still an epic movie in the James Bond tradition with intense action, beautiful locations, gorgeous women, and creepy antagonists. And James Bond doesn't stop using gadgets. They just represent the very cutting edge of today's technology instead of science fiction. This realism, along with that of the characters and situations, allows for more visceral enjoyment than most James Bond films of recent decades can offer. Feeling what's happening in the film, instead of observing it at a remove, constitutes a splendid change of pace for James Bond.

More than many other movies, though, James Bond depends on the charisma, wit, toughness, and gravitas of the actor who plays the central character. All the innovations of the producers would have been for naught without an exceptional actor playing James Bond. Daniel Craig, fortunately, obliterates many fans' expectations with a performance that hearkens back to Sean Connery's raw toughness balanced with subtle humor. Pierce Brosnan remains my favorite Bond, with Connery ranking second, but Craig comes in on Connery's heels, surpassing the other Bond actors.

After seeing Casino Royale, I gladly proclaim, I can't wait for the next movie!

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Stag

I just saw this movie last night on DVD. Holy crap...what an improvement over some of the crap-tacular Bond flicks we have had - including anything with Timothy Dalton. Yecch.

Good movie, tight action, good bad guy, less stupid techno crap. The scene in Africa with Bond chasing the guy through the construction site was fantastic.

Brikar

I'm getting my review of the DVD ready, but yeah, it kicks ASS.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Stag

Rock on my brotha!!