CASINO ROYALE

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Columbia Pictures
Grade: B
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Written By: Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Ian
Fleming novel
Cast: Daniel Craig, Judy Dench, Samantha Bond, Mads
Mikkelsen, Eva Green, Jeffrey Wright
Screened at: AMC 34th St., NYC, 11/17/06
Opens: November 17, 2006

Now that even the red states have voted to increase the minimum wage to over seven dollars an hour, what would you think of a person willing to work for less than that minimum with the expectation of receiving tips amounting to six-tenths of one percent of the dollars spent? The gratuity is given without histrionics, in fact, let your mind wander and you may not notice it. It’s a result of a poker pot with $115,000,000 in chips on the table. The winner of this entire amount, James Bond (Daniel Craig), slips the croupier his tip: a chip that the dealer can turn in for one million dollars. Not bad for a night’s work. I should have been a croupier rather than a film critic, but who knew?

There’s nothing penny-ante about Martin Campbell’s royal treatment of people who play for big bucks in “Casino Royale,” which is a prequel to Bond’s career taking him back to his earning the double-oh designation from his boss, M (Judi Dench). Getting M’s imprimatur required his killing two enemies of the state. Though it’s based on the Ian Fleming novel, Campbell’s pic, adapted for the screen by Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis, and Robert Wade, includes cell phones, and 3-D computer graphics, recent inventions that do not quite match the wow factor of the gadgets that Sean Connery’s Bond depended on.

Whether this new, stylish, and completely modern version will reinforce your love for 007 or turn you away will depend on whether you can stand a few substitutions. For one, there really is no Bond girl this time, “girl” meaning “bimbo.” Instead, 007 partners up with a woman, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), who thinks that brains are the most important sex organ, quite a challenge for a guy whose witty one-liners probably could not cut much ice with a female associate who probably cut her teeth on Spinoza. For another, though the fancy cars still abound, they do not come equipped with cool devices such as a rear exhaust that can temporarily blind the path of those that follow. Nor does Bond’s Omega watch do much other than tell time. Still a third, the villain is not a Cold War demon who puts a plague on both houses, the American and the Soviet, but a band of terrorists who buy weapons for a great deal of money and expect payment on time. Finally, we have to do without a Bond of unmatched finesse, one who could draw a latte in seconds and insists that his martinis are shaken, not stirred. Daniel Craig, an impossibly handsome and manly British actor whose best film to date is Matthew Vaughn’s “Layer Cake” in which his character, XXXX learns that he has no control over his life or the lives of the people around him. (In a small role this year, he fares well as Perry Smith, a cold-blooded killer in
Douglas McGrath’s “Infamous”).

Beautifully lensed by Phil Meheux in the Bahamas, Prague, Lake Como and a crumbling Venice, “Casino Royale” opens with a black-and-white sequence to introduce us to the two assassinations that resulted in Bond’s being granted the double-oh sobriquet. The grant comes with a harsh criticism from his boss, a slightly ruffled M–whose role in this pic does not begin to compare with her Oscar-worthy performance as an English high-school teacher in Richard Eyre’s “Notes on a Scandal.”

In the principal yarn, Bond teams up with Vesper Lynd, as calculating a person as 007 who from the starts resists his sexual overtures. Their aim is to bankrupt Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) in a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro, thereby preventing him from paying off the terrorists–which would lead to Le Chiffre’s torture and death at their hands. During the card game, Bond orders a vodka martini, not a cool thing to do when you need an alert concentration, nor wise when the drink contains a poison that in minutes would give the agent a fatal heart attack. Also at the card game is Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), who appears to Bond to be just another rich player but is (surprise) not what he seems to be. When Bond and Vesper are captured and tortured by Le Chiffre, who demands to know the account number and password of a Swiss account, we wonder what can be done to turn the tables when Bond, displaying a body which the villain notes has been “taken good care of,” is given a guilt trip: give up the password or your girlfriend dies.

A terrific scene involving what must be the best stunt men in the business occurs in sub-Saharan Africa, where Bond chases a man around a construction area. Each sweep of broad, physical action is mediated by dialogue that does not approach the wit with which we’re familiar if we’ve seen the entire 007 repertory. The opening music by David Arnold is original, which should make traditionalists in the audience uncomfortable but excite those who consider all previous episodes to be fodder for a wax museum.

My final grade of B is not a higher one because part of me misses the more urbane Bonds, the ones with the clever double-entendres, the bimbettes, the self-conscious emphasis on material goods: on driving the most expensive cars, wearing the pricey watches. Ultimately, this up-to-the-minute style pays off in a long picture that contains hardly a dull moment. We should mention that Daniel Craig will have no problem renewing his contract, though serving as 007 could be the kiss of death for other, less escapist roles that he may seek.

Rated PG-13. 144 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online