Casino Royale (2006)/Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Here are two related posts from my Yahoo! 360 page for your reading pleasure/displeasure. First up is my post on Casino Royale, originally posted 20 November 2006, followed by some thoughts on Tomorrow Never Dies, originally posted 4 June 2007.
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Been a Bond fan for a long time. Enjoy all of them, except Diamonds Are Forever, Never Say Never Again, and Die Another Day (probably should include License To Kill, but I’ll get to that). I started as a Roger Moore fan, got to Sean Connery, and then dealt with Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. And now we get blonde, sculpted (just ask my wife) Daniel Craig.
Short version: Craig is terrific, and this a good flick, the best Bond since Goldeneye. Check it out.
Long version: This flick is a retcon of the Bond we’re familiar with. Casino Royale is an origin story, the kind never previously shown on screen. It’s also a new explanation for many of the conventions we’ve come to accept, some archaic and some more modern. There’s no Q, no Moneypenny, and Judi Dench is the original M. Bond drives an Aston Martin, which is equipped with some gadgets. He’s smart, he’s a womanizer, and he’s got a big ego. There’s a lot that feels familiar.
The real strength of the movie lies in new attachments to the well-known Bond qualities- realism and consequence. Let’s be honest- I dig Roger Moore, but the next realistic looking punch he throws will be his first. Connery and Brosnan looked the part a little more, but their fights weren’t much better. Craig fights like he was trained in the UFC, fighting and grappling with dynamic physicality. And that muscular frame isn’t just eye candy for the girls; he looks like what a licensed-to-kill agent should look like.
It’s not just the look, though. James Bond, as created by Ian Fleming, is an assassin. It’s sometimes hard for me to accept Moore or even Connery in that role- too charming, too pleasant, too warm (not qualities of the underrated Dalton Bond flicks). Craig’s Bond is icy, vicious, even sociopathic at times. He’s not a problem solving playboy with a Walther- he’s a killer.
Those kills have repercussions. Some come in the form of spilled blood and wounds, which we see a lot of. Some comes in the form of international outcry, when Bond impulsively kills in front of a surveillance camera. Some comes in the form of lost opportunity, when a potential information source becomes a bullet recepticle. And of course, the nature of Bond’s work has always brought one consequence- women in his life have a short life expectancy.
What the audience is presented with is a post 9-11 Bond. He’s not struggling with the KGB, or a ludicrous super villain club like SPECTRE (but hey, I’ve always loved those baddies). He’s fighting with terrorism and the monetary mechanics that make it work. The work is messy, the results not always what they seem. Some of Bond’s actions have blowback. It’s interesting to note that while Bond has often had an eye for the big picture, here he needs it pointed out for him, and that is the key to this new Bond. Craig’s Bond (and in fairness, we should also credit the screenwriters!) is a tough, talented, but flawed creature. He’s all the more interesting for it.
I’ve seen this said elsewhere, I believe by Moriarty at Ain’t It Cool News, but I’ve not felt the immediate desire for a Bond sequel in some time. The movie sets the next episode up very well plotwise, but it’s this new take on the character that fuels my intrigue. Here’s to the new, complicated James Bond.
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I met a very cool co-worker of Sandra’s recently, a gent named Matt. He works for Yahoo!, but like me, he is also a film guy. After introductions, I got drawn into a conversation about Casino Royale.
Matt is not a big fan of CR, and while my overall opinion differs, he raised an interesting point that night- CR isn’t really a Bond film. Yes, James Bond is the central character, and the M character exists, and hey, Casino Royale was based on the book of the same title by Ian Fleming. However, many of the signature set pieces of almost all Bond films certainly are not present. Seeing as I like lists so much, here’s a short one comprising some of the significant Bond film conventions that are missing from CR:
-no Moneypenny
-no Quartermaster of any kind (Q!)
-no gadgets (yeah, the car was nice and it had a defib unit, but no guns or rockets or ejector seats)
In Matt’s opinion, a Bond film isn’t a Bond film without those components. And I must admit, I gave his point a lot of thought, because I had noticed this myself.
In the end, my opinion of Casino Royale is unchanged, at least in part because of something else Matt said that I agree with- its a good action movie (his final statement was that CR is a good action film, but it simply isn’t a Bond film).
I do not dispute Matt’s point on this, and I’ll go this far: it isn’t like any Bond film we’ve been presented with in quite awhile. It is not, for example, like Tomorrow Never Dies.
TND is the second Bond vehicle to star Pierce Brosnan, following the highly successful and well received Goldeneye. I remember liking it at the time. The plot is as follows: a media tycoon, driven by greed and ego, attempts to foment war between Britain and China, and it’s up to Bond to thwart his ambitions and prevent World War III. And while it doesn’t reach the depths of Die Another Day, a truly awful Bond flick, one can certainly see the downturn in the late 90s Bond beginning here.
I’ve always felt that the difficult times for Bond movies were primarily caused by two things: over-reliance on Bond gimmicks and world history. TND displays both of these problems, even as it manages to have some good moments.
Bond has pretty much always had a cool, gadget laden car, from the time of Goldfinger on. Those gadgets have changed movie to movie, depending on the whims of the writ- I MEAN, the specific dangers of each mission. The car that becomes a submarine? Well sure, he was near the sea, Bond might need that. Skis out of the bottom to deal with snow? Hey, he’s in Austria, it’s plausible. A little BMW hood emblem that pops out with a cutting device attached just in case a high tension wire is at exactly the right height? Yeah, I’m not buyin’ that one.
Look, I know that it’s all contrivance- they’re made up stories. The trick is (and I strive to do this in my own writing, so I know it’s a challenge), I don’t want the contrivance dangled in my face (nor do I enjoy all of the rampant product placement- BMW, Nokia, etc.- it really sticks out awkwardly in this movie). Now, is one little stupid gimmick that big of a deal? Does it ruin the movie? No, but it does stick in my craw, and it indicates a bigger problem- creative focus on cosmetics and tricks as opposed to plotting and character.
Speaking of character, the villain, Eliot Carver, is way too much of a cartoon character. Much of his dialogue is patently ludicrous- a hodge podge of bad one liners and overwrought evil genius frivolity. I’m guessing that the inspiration of his character went something like this:
“Y’know who’d make a good villain?”
“Who?”
“Rupert Murdoch!”
“Yeah, that’s it!”
Seriously, an evil publisher? However, this actually goes to that second weakness- the history of that particular era. Roger Moore and Sean Connery had smooth sailing during the Cold War. Timothy Dalton got stuck with a really mean drug dealer. Alek Trevalian of Goldeneye was quite good as a betrayed and corrupted spy, but that was only going to work once. Sadly, with no big, bad USSR around, it’s been a crap shoot to find a usable villain, and it usually doesn’t work.
(An interesting side note: Casino Royale proves that the War on Terror hasn’t been a disaster for everyone…)
One Bond convention that the film doesn’t blow is Q. Desmond Llewelyn is his usual fine self as the grumpy armourer- perhaps it’s the fact that the convention is based on a character interaction that has allowed it to remain successful. Samantha Bond as Moneypenny isn’t bad, but come on, she’s just not Lois Maxwell.
For me, rewatching this flick really served one purpose. TND shows that blind adherence to convention, plus bad luck with current events, is a recipe for a mediocre Bond film. Letting go of those trappings, and creating solid characters, helped to make CR, a terrific entry to the Bond series.
However, I do hope that its inevitable sequels bring a little Q and gadget fun, too…
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