Casino Royale English Movie
This isn't the James Bond we've grown up watching. He's neither like Sean Connery nor Roger Moore. He isn't even like Pierce Brosnan!
Lean, mean, humourless and ostensibly ruthless, Daniel Craig as Bond creates a new-millennium secret agent who goes through a gamut of incredible adventures with opponents who are, this time, not only well matched but sometimes slightly more athletic.
This James Bond seems to be on the wrong side of 40 ... almost pushing 50. Believable and real, the new Bond gets to you, creating a sense of déjà vu and yet renewing the old 007's licence to thrill in ways that we know, and yet don't know.
Martin Campbell has earlier directed the Bond flick "Goldeneye". He's on a totally different territory this time. On a more surface level, the car chases are minimised. "Casino Royale" involves a lot of footslogging.
Right at the outset we see one of the most elaborate sequences of hot pursuit where Bond chases a culprit through an amazing techno-advanced construction site.
The various construction machines and half-erected edifices become props in a passionately steep power play. It's surely one of the most exciting chases in and outside the borders of James Bond.
The lengthy film has an implosive build-up but surprisingly, the girls and gadgets are minimised. The villains are suave conquerors of the universe but never grotesque or caricatural as they used to be in the earlier Bond flicks.
Amendments seem to have been made to accommodate new, more tolerant definitions of materialism in today's day and age. In the new Bond film, Daniel Craig's movements are propelled from machismo to pain and tragedy.
This is the most vulnerable James Bond ever. In one particularly painful homage to mortality, he's tied stark naked to a bottomless chair and flogged on his behind by the villain - a rather ironical reference to the evolution of Bond.
Not only does this Bond suffer an almost fatal heart attack while playing for the highest stakes in the casino, he also falls hopelessly in love with the enigmatic Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) who of course betrays his heart.
Towards the end, Bond's imperturbability melts to reveal a bleeding heart. But finally he returns to what he knows best - spying and vanquishing enemies.
Everything to do with James Bond has changed here. Only the thrill quotient remains unchanged ... And of course Judi Dench as the hard-as-nails M.
And Daniel Criag as Bond? He's tough and tricky. But Bond finally succumbs to the one illness that is known to have killed kings and statesman - Love.
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