| |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
|
Casino Royale
At long last, after over twenty films, the mystery that is James Bond, Agent 007 has been penetrated, and we are provided enlightening exposure into the psyche of one of the most enduring cinematic icons. The exploration is simultaneously insightful and dangerous; insightful because of the unanswered questions that over forty years of Bond films have led us to ask (why shaken and not stirred?), dangerous because the character’s persona exists beyond easy explanations that a typical prequel could provide. Casino Royale sheds insight by giving us a Bond before he became the immovable, dangerous, and omnipresent secret agent that he now is; it reveals the freshly-scrubbed face that will one day grow into the darker, rougher face of Commander Bond. He is rookie with a soul here, stumbling in the dark and inventing himself along the way. The film is so revealing that it sometimes makes us want to cover our ears, because we’d rather leave it to our own imagination to guess how Bond became Bond. But it also compels us forward with a fascinating character that is totally, utterly profound, forcing us to take our hands from our ears in spite of any objections. This prequel isn’t a reinvention but a rejuvenation, showing us the weathering of a man’s soul that melts his heart and turns him into the cold, calculated, charming 007 of vintage films past. I have a love-hate relationship with the James Bond film series. It’s not Bond that I don’t like—I think he’s one of the most fascinating creations in the movies. It’s the movies that often inhabit him and the actors who try to embody him that often leave me frustrated. After the first six films or so, which I consider to be classic Bond, the series slipped into a comfortable formula of cool gadgets and overcharged villains that lost what made Bond so compelling in the first place. Casino Royale does everything it can to rectify the problem, and it consequently is the best Bond film since we left him as played by the underrated George Lazenby, weeping over the body of his murdered wife (I realize this statement will be enough to instantly make some people stop reading my review, but if you don’t recognize just how good On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is, you’re just plain wrong). After a few decades of mostly mediocrity, it’s nice to have 007 back. The difference between good Bond and mediocre Bond is how well each individual film understood his complicated motivations. Those who dismiss him as a man-whore or a stale character overlook the point of the series’ longevity. To watch Bond’s cocky grin, his debonair style and dress, his expertise on wine, and his ability to seduce women—any woman—is to only see his method in saving the world, the mask that he uses as the British Secret Service’s greatest spy. Underneath that mask is someone far more complex and disturbed—a person who is so lost to himself that we get the impression he is as efficient an agent as he is because he doesn’t care if he lives or dies—but if he could choose, he’d pick death. He is a double-O agent for the same reason the great poet Charles Bukowski was an alcoholic—it is a slower form of suicide for a man who lacks the nerve to put a bullet into his own brain. Bond, of course, would never admit this truth about himself, because he has worn his mask for so long that he is incapable of leaving it behind or actualizing himself beyond it. But every so often, in the best of the Bonds, we see a glimmer of his self-destruction—a hint of the humanity that he has lost so long ago, after so many kills and seduction games and missions to save a world for which he couldn’t give a damn. He has, quite wittingly, drowned his soul and replaced with his double-O status. The films starring Sean Connery in the role understood these characteristics without ever stating them directly. That’s why they are the best. By the time we met Bond in these films, he had been the best British spy for so long that he could save the world in his sleep; Connery played him as a man fully aware of his skills and who used them to stay just a step or two ahead of his self-destructive tendencies. George Lazenby’s outing revealed a Bond who reluctantly emerged from his persona briefly enough to fall in love, and the film’s final tragedy served as a painful reminder for why he built his shell in the first place. Roger Moore’s films were awful, meandering messes, no small thanks to Moore himself, who sleepwalked through the role by embracing Bond’s devilish characteristics without ever taking the time to consider their implications. Timothy Dalton fared better in his two outings as Bond—particularly in License to Kill, in which the mission became personal and allowed Bond to react out of revenge instead of duty. It showed 007 at his most dangerous and reckless, and it was the last time we would ever see this deeply disturbed Bond until Casino Royale—Pierce Brosnan’s four outings as the secret agent were so over the top in terms of action and overplotting that they never took the time to examine Bond himself as a human being, even though Brosnan was a great choice for the role. He frankly wasn’t allowed to explore the part. That brings us up to date: Now, here is Daniel Craig in a film that goes even farther back and gives us a Bond before he lost his soul. There are times that we have to remind ourselves that we are watching the same man as personified by Connery, Dalton, et al because he seems so fresh, so naïve and capable of openly, frequently making mistakes along the way. By the end of the film, he has wholeheartedly embraced his deadly shell, though it is difficult to tell how his performance in later films will interpret the notes of the more archetypal Bond since here he spends most of his screen time sounding completely different notes. But at least we know how he got there, and that the origins of his persona that we’ve always suspected are in fact correct. To say that Craig is the most compelling Bond since Connery is an understatement; he instantly renders Moore and Brosnan’s films forgettable, and the films of Lazenby and Dalton only scratched the surface of Craig’s utterly magnetic draw. Craig, unlike the other Bond actors sans Dalton, had a career beforehand that established him as an actor capable of evoking great subtleties in emotionally overbearing situations (see The Mother and Enduring Love). Watch the way he tries to convince a confederate that he can complete the mission—how he draws her close to him and hypnotically mutters, “Look in my eyes. I can beat him.” He’s a man completely aware of his abilities, and he doesn’t like it when people don’t also believe in them. Now, compare that dangerous confidence with a later, extraordinary scene that is probably the tenderest in the history of the series, when Bond consoles a rookie who has just had her first kill. She sits fully-clothed in the shower; he is in a tux, but he sits down next to her, allowing himself to be soaked. Without the faintest hint of seduction, he puts his arm around her, comforts her, and warms her chilled hands in his own. He knows what it is like to experience a first kill, and he selflessly provides her with the comfort he probably wished he’d had at the time of his own first. It’s a hauntingly beautiful scene that’s far too personal to belong in a Bond film, yet here it is, and it works. This balance between assertive cockiness and soothing sympathy for his confederate is where Craig transcends all the other Bond actors. We watch the contrast and know that eventually, Bond will become a character who exclusively occupies moments of the former and never again the latter. It’s kind of heartbreaking to watch these sincere, warm elements of himself and know that he will soon lose them forever. The whole film seems content with setting up exhilarating action sequences typical of a 007 film and then returning to quieter scenes of a human Bond. Of course, the plot doesn’t matter, because it has never mattered in any Bond film. He always has to stop save the world from a madman, or a terrorist, or a tycoon with criminal mastermind tendencies. In this case, it’s a French businessman who bleeds out of one of his tear ducts and funds terrorism with his investors’ money that he doubles/triples in Poker games. That setup is enough to provide sufficient thrills, my favorite being an extended chase-sequence at the beginning in which Bond pursues what appears to be a human rubber ball through a construction zone in South Africa. Casino Royale is directed by Martin Campbell, who also gave us the series-reviving Goldeneye in 1995, and here he outdoes himself with some of the most jaw-dropping stunts I’ve seen in a good while that reveal, for the first time since Dalton’s era, just how proficient Bond is as an action hero when he isn’t rely relying on Q’s bag of tricks. Any of the previous Bonds could have pulled off these stunts, though Craig brings a gorilla-like aggression that prefers fists and muscle over gadgets. But consider the sequences with fellow agent Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green in certainly the greatest Bond girl performance, as they size one another up with soft-spoken flirtations. Paul Haggis of Crash contributed to the script, and he allows his knack for fluent, literary dialogue to work its magic here. Try to imagine Roger Moore pulling off these lines, in which Bond exerts a ghost of shyness underneath his assertive charm and Lynd responds accordingly and—what do you know—one-ups the double-O agent. The scene is beyond Moore’s understanding of the character; Connery, Dalton, or Brosnan might have made them work, though at the points in Bond’s career in which they played him, he wouldn’t have bothered with sincere small talk. Such exploration is left for Craig alone, who miraculously plays them with a sweetness that exemplifies Bond’s seduction game and also provides it with a rarely-seen home base, before flirtation was a survival mechanism and was still simply a charming human being’s natural tendency to attract another. Casino Royale is one of the many prequels to successful franchises to come out in the past few years, and it is the only one besides last year’s Batman Begins that doesn’t seem like a gimmick but rather a fresh, sincere approach to examine its subject matter (the less said about Exorcist: The Beginning, the better). It’s based on the first novel in the original Bond series by Ian Fleming, and it’s more or less faithful, though it adds layers of character development and action sequences to what was essentially a plot about an extended card game. Alongside the unofficial Never Say Never Again, which featured Sean Connery as an older, retired Bond who has become a victim of his own legacy, we now have the bookends to the franchise, with the others in the series as the continuing adventures in the middle (come to think of it, Michael Bay’s The Rock could be an acceptable “final” chapter as well, as it features an elderly Connery as an imprisoned British Secret Service agent who is most certainly based on his interpretation of Bond). All the films together tell something close to a complete story, especially in light of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and License to Kill, which both blatantly nodded to the gritty human qualities in Bond’s personality. That said, Casino Royale is so fresh and inspired that I’m sure the series is far from over. As far as I’m concerned, Craig has earned the right to play the part for as long as he’d like, to allow the character to inhabit scenes that remind us that he once indeed was a human being quite capable of sincere affection. The moment that this quality finally melts away and Bond turns indefinitely into stone, we realize that Casino Royale has instantly reinterpreted the entire franchise by transforming every other Bond film into the ongoing tragedy of a man utterly lost to his self-destructive tendencies. It’s quite a film that can compel us back to its predecessors, to reexamine a tried and true icon with a new lens without ever compromising what makes him immortal. Sean Connery’s assured grin has never seemed so sad. Cast: A Sony Pictures release. Directed by Martin Campbell. Written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis. Based on the book by Ian Fleming. Rated PG-13 for violence, extended action sequences, sexuality, a scene of torture, and brief (none sexual) nudity. Running time: 144 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: November 17, 2006. |
||
