With a name like Casino Royale, I should have known it was going to be a
cliched, winner-takes-all Poker game in a fancy gambling den full of tuxedos and slinky Versaces.
And frankly, all this Casino shit bores me.
So I'll have to stick my head out and say I didn't quite enjoy Casino Royale, despite what the critics have been raving about. I mean these are the same people, who like me,
ewwww-ed in utter disbelief when Daniel Craig was cast as the, let me see, 6th Bond? After the iconic Connery, lecherous Moore, one-shot Lazenby, stuffy Dalton and suave Brosnan. OK so Craig isn't so bad afterall but his thinning blond pate and much-too-blue eyes still distract =)) However the man has one helluva bod I concede and even has M (the marvellous-as-usual Judi Dench) checking out his tight
derriere.
The movie, directed by GoldenEye's Martin Campbell, promises to showcase Bond in his grittier, more human form when the MI6 agent just receives his license to kill. Like a
007 Batman Begins of sorts I suppose. And in this respect, it stays true to its premise. This Bond sweats, bleeds, has an ego the size of his libido and gives his heart to a
chiobu after deciding to hang up his Walther PPK with attached suppressor.
But I mean, C'mon, the Bond franchise worked so well because we got to see some really nifty gadgets and cars introduced by an eccentric Q. No such thing here. Well if you count the numerous product-placement shots of Bond's Sony-Erricson handphone and a brief mention of his Omega watch, that's about the best you'll get. But Wait! There is his new Aston Martin DBS which has its missles and invisible cloak replaced with a cardiac defibrillator. Errrr....=))
Eva Green (think she's French or something) is cast as Bond-girl Vesper Lynd, an agent of the British Treasury sent to accompany Bond to Casino Royale in Montenegro to fund his gambling habit with Tax-payer dollars. Yes she's quite the kewt chick and the initial frosty animosity between the 2 is quite amusing to watch. But sadly, although Bond gets madly in love with her enough to swop his double 00 for a double 88 in a fairytale Chinese restaurant wedding, the girl has other things on her mind.
Danish star Mads Mikkleson plays Le Chiffre, private banker to the world's terrorists and the Baddie in this latest Fleming excursion. He looks ugly in the movie (and even has blood for tears) but when I saw a publicity shot of the fella recently, Mikkleson's actually quite the dead-ringer for handsome Brit-singer James Blunt. The dandy Dane doesn't really impress in Royale. And perhaps his most memorable scene is when he tortures Bond with some kind of swinging testicle torture-contraption and ogles 007's naked body. Errrr....=))
The movie gets quite draggy at the end, with multiple 'false endings'. You know what I mean, everytime you think its over, there is some kind of twist. And even after it finally ends, you get a sense that there is no proper conclusion. The only conclusion perhaps is that we will probably be seeing much more of Mr Daniel 'Do-I-Look-Like-I-Care-If-My-Martini-Is-Shaken-Or-Stirred' Craig in his Tux in the next few spy-flick instalments.
Not such a bad proposition really.
IF he loosens up abit.
7/10