Saw Casino Royale on Friday night. Here are a few thoughts:
[Warning: Spoilers]
- Daniel Craig is hot. Hotter than his pre-Bond publicity would have revealed.
- …and doesn’t he have a touch of Steve McQueen about him? The director totally knew that, too.
- …but he pouts waaaaay too much. I thought he was going to bust into Blue Steel at any moment.
- The Parkour bit at the beginning was awesome. Sebastien Foucan is unbelievable - some of the things he did looked like stunts, but I’m reliably assured that they probably weren’t.
- I liked how Bond wasn’t totally invincible - like, he got beaten up and poisened and all sorts. In the Parkour scene, and in fact throughout, he was out of breath, bruised, scabbed, cut, keeping up, but definitely not *quite* making the jumps or the graceful leaps down eight flights of stairs. This is a marked contrast from more recent portrayals of Bond in which he is seemingly able to ski like a pro while whipping up a perfect light Victoria sponge and fighting off henchmen (in Portuguese). Making him a bit more flawed and human made it more enjoyable.
- Another contrast was the lack of gadgets employed: not many. Brosnan’s Bond had descended into flipping a switch on his (insert clever gadget here) to enable him to escape from any tricky situation. That plot device was getting a bit old.
- Product placement: Yeah, there was a lot. But most of it was fairly contextual. The only bit that really smarted was the dumb conversation about his watch: “Is that a Rolex?” “no, it’s an Omega - yours for only £1499 at Argos this Christmas”
- No Q. This was probably a good thing, because the whole wheeling-John-Cleese-on-to-be-John-Cleese-for-10-minutes was getting very tired.
- It was good to see a baddie who didn’t resort to lasers and shark-pools and hidden trap-doors and cosmic rays and satellites in order to try to finish Bond off. Just a chair and a rope seemd fairly effective.
- Also, worth noting that the baddie didn’t leave Bond hanging precariously over a pit of excitable mongeese, held only by a fraying rope, safe in the knowledge that a sticky end was surely only minutes away, but unable to stick around to watch because of an important appointment at the dentist or whatever. Because that never works.
I have to agree with everything you say here! I was kind of skeptical about Daniel Craig because he always seemed like too much of a pretty-boy in some of his previous films. I think he pulled it off great! I was also surprised to see Rotten Tomatoes gave it 96%. The opening foot chase was probably one of the best chase scenes I’ve seen in years.
I’m also also agreeing with your list. His cuts and bruises healed within minutes. It was a fun action film but it didn’t feel like a Bond film. Not as bad as a Jean CvD. adventure, this had a good plot and the required guns - actually if you look back most Bond films are corny and this isn’t. Bond however, shouldn’t laugh that much but the ladies all like Daniel’s blue eyes.
- He’s a bit wrinkled for a Bond who has supposedly just become a 00? Set modern day prequels - whatever next. Cubby Broccoli would glare.
Thought it was the best Bond film I’ve seen in years. Because it had an actual plot. The past bonds have had totally ludicrous plot lines and awful scripts. Shows how much a decent script is more important than invisible cars and surfing waves.
I thought the comedy worked and the characters were realistic bond characters. It lost it a bit for the lovey dovery bit near the end but aside from that thought it was fantastic.
Did miss a Q though.