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Re: "Casino Royale:"

Posted by Bulkington (A) on November 21, 2006 at 14:36:12

In Reply to: "Casino Royale:" posted by tinear on November 20, 2006 at 16:37:47:

was anyone really captivated by this?

I was.

Craig is wooden.

No he wasn't. The film more the sufficiently justified the redefinition of Bond in the direction of cold, calculated brutality and away from the former flip, suave/foppish, no-stakes, campy, catoon action.

I am disappointed, especially after reading about his thespian prowess on the English stage.

See some of Craig's other performances. He's quite an actor: it just so happens that this thespian is playing a Bond who isn't a thespian.

He exhibited the range of... a British Josh Hartnett. Okay, perhaps a tad more.

Had he exhibited the range you seem to have wanted from him, he would have presented (and the film pretty well addressed this: remember, if you were paying attention, the exchanges about coldness, "armor," and the capacity to kill) a paradoxical monster. It was high time the Bond films got a little serious about violence instead of treating it in the flip fashion of the campy, sub-Playboy universe of the former franchise entries.

S P O I L E R:
First off, Chris Connell crooning the title song? Gimme a break. And the song was irritating, at best.

TOTAL AGREEMENT

I always thought Portis Head or just a solo Beth Gibbons could have turned in a great Bond theme. Can't win them all.

Where's ol' Tom when you need him?

He would have been a total misfit for this re-vamped Bond world, whose laws work differently than those of the previous films. If anything can be said to have rewritten the terms for action spy thrillers, it's the Bourne movies. Sadly, they're saddled with that horrible Moby theme song. Can't win them all.

The scene in the Casino? A classic!
Of boredom.

Rim shot!

Only folks that think tv poker is exciting will stay awake as a 24-hour poker game seems to last a week.

I don't think "24 hour" poker (or shorter) is exciting, and I thought the poker scenes here were just fine. Your hyperbole isn't true to my experience of these scenes.

The stunts? Well, we've seen them all.

You wanted more explosions and fast cars with cloaking divices instead? And where have we seen a chase sequence like that? I thought bringing in an athlete for a parkour display was a nice touch.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that when one expends a massive amount on a stunt, it must be given it's fair share of time, whether or not it sinks the film as efficiently as a building... on the Grand Canal in Venice. That scene shows the problem with the film: five mini-climaxes exhaust the viewer before the arrival of the "real" one.

What are you talking about? Which mini climaxes? What's a "real" climax? You mean the series of conflicts and escapes prior to the collapsing building on the Grand Canal?

Kind of like having that many appetizers, rich ones at that, before the lukewarm entree hits the table.

Uhh. Well (SPOILER!!!) they needed some way to kill the love interest without disfiguring her, so some manner of drowning (brought about here by a collapsing building on the Grand Canal) serving as finale for a seeming double-cross/intrigue we may or may not have suspected and which bond certainly didn't, seemed just fine to me. What did you want? I'm trying to figure out what the sensibilities of the previous Bond films would have offered by way of improvement rather than by way of plausibility-stretching outlandishness (relatively speaking, of course).

Craig has a wonderful figure and all but... why do we see so much more of men's physiques now in film than attractive female's? Are the producers of the new Bond film... gay?

Good Lord.

Is Craig being pitched to a "diverse" crowd?

Quite possibly. Since it's women who get wet over Conery and Brosnan (and Moore?), and since, you know, times change and modern men can be assumed not to squirm in the face of equal opportunity appeals to sexuality.... What's your complaint? And Eva Green tops any Bond girl you can name: if you're upset there wasn't more of her, you can get your fill with The Dreamers; if you wish there'd been pointless beddings by the way, again: this is not MY MOTHER'S James Bond.

Note, by the way, how self-conscious the film was to separate itself from those old sensibilities: the exchanges between Craig and Green about whether or not he views women as mere conquests; the subversion of the old-Bond formula by ordering champaigne and caviar for one when he suddenly has more pressing matters to attend to than sex. For shame, Mr. Bond! Priorities!

In attempting to make this a "serious" Bond film they failed by keeping most of the problems in the earlier efforts

I thought those earlier problems were pretty obviously replaced by later ones.

but they also eliminated the pieces that kept it a bit interesting: Bond's humor and the gadgets.

Wait. Didn't you mean to say "the pieces that made the old films tiresome"?

The plot was so convoluted, as well, that instead of the listed three writers (usually a sign of problems), it resembled more a cake with ten bakers a warring.

Are you saying you had a hard time following the plot? Didn't seem convoluted to me--not in a bad way at least. I thought it was merely "not simplistic." Citing the number of writers as some kind of short hand proof anyway seems specious to me.

Oh, did I mention the myriad fight scenes?
The Asian martial arts guys have elevated the bar.

Huh? You wanted Jackie Chan? Jet Li? This film's patent, programatic effort was to inject realism back into the franchise (if there ever was any in the first place--evil roadside assassins with ... scorpians! Oooo! Buzz saws! Ooooo!), which it did quite well. When's the last time a Bond had to nurse his wounds in a hotel room or change his bloodied clothes or return to the poker table with bruised and scraped knuckles? You seem to be pining for the cartoon self parodies that were this film's predecessors.

This film attempts to turn back the clock

And here I thought you were arguing for a turning back of the clock.

but all I could think was how much better Connery was in his historic battle in the rail car.

Please. And while we're at it, let's bring back Western saloon brawls.

Come to think of it, Craig has more than a passing resemblance to that guy...

Not at all.

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