Day Nine: Casino Royale

CASINO ROYALE

Starring:
-Daniel Craig
-Eva Green
-Judi Dench

Directed by: Martin Campbell

Screenwriting Credits: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, & Paul Haggis

MPAA Rating: PG-13 – intense sequences of violent action, a scene of torture, sexual content, and nudity

Bond is now blond and, if you’re anything like me, this seems to be almost unforgivable. Nevertheless, the opening credit sequence is pretty cool. As I understand it, the premise of this film is to present Bond in his first years serving in “00” status.

It’s a rainy day in Uganda and a couple of crooks talk business over pinball and beers. Two trucks pull up out front and out pop some skeezy looking gentlemen who’ve come to join the evil party. Money changes hands for Le Chiffre, a banker working exclusively for the world’s terrorists.

A crowd has assembled in Madagascar for the unusually cruel practice of watching a snake and a ferret fight to the death.

Men are stupid.

Blond Bond and his partner are watching their target –a hateful looking burn victim- from opposite ends of the arena. The partner, in true rookie fashion, seems unable to hide the fact that he’s communicating secret agent style, despite Bond’s admonitions.

“Stop touching… your ear.” – Bond

The burn victim approaches the partner, who panics and pulls his gun. The target bolts with the partner on his heels; all the while Bond plays it cool. The partner fumbles and falls into the center of the pit with the fighting animals. His gun goes off. No one’s concerned with the ferret’s well being once the bullets start flying, so the crowd scampers like ants under a magnifying glass.

Bond is forced to join the chase and he and the target run through the jungle and wind up at a construction site. Naturally, Bond knows how to drive a bulldozer, so he blows through equipment, machinery, and other people to reach his target. Inexplicably, the bad guy can scale a wall almost as well as Spiderman, but Bond is on his tail every minute. They leap all around in very dangerous situations and shoot at each other as they tower ominously hundreds of feet in the air. You know, normal stuff.

Bond finally corners Burn Victim, who shoots. His gun clicks comically and he looks at it in disbelief, wondering for a moment if he’s in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. He decides to incapacitate his pursuer by tossing the now useless weapon at his head, but there’s just one problem. Only an idiot would throw something at James Bond and expect it to hit him. I’ve never seen one of these movies all the way through and even I know that. Bond catches the gun effortlessly, flings it back, and pings the target in the head. Heehee.

Finally the opponents are close enough to punch and kick one another, but it isn’t interesting if they do this on land, so they continue to leap through the sky like squirrels on tree branches.

Long story made short, Bond kills the crap out of his opponent, blows something up, and escapes. Duh. At this point in the movie, all I’m thinking about is how cool it would be to have a Bond game for the Wii where you actually had to punch people and shoot at them at the same time. This would be great for the newer, multi-tasking generations.

Bond checks his text messages and, because sex sells, there’s a half naked chick on a boat with the same kooky-eyed bad guy from the first scene. One thing I love about Bond is all his cool gadgetry. Judi Dench, however, is not impressed. She marches in with her stylish pantsuit and gripes at Bond for killing a single bomb-maker when the world is filled with many more evil people who need to be taken out and spanked. Bond heads to a place called Pleasure Island in the Bahamas because, obviously, there’s never going to be a Bond movie set in a convent town called Holy Mary of We Love Jesus, now is there?

Bond very cleverly fake ties his shoe so that he can spot the locations of the hotel’s security cameras. He wrecks a Range Rover, and he looks pretty good in that white button-up, especially for a blond guy. With hotel security busy consoling the owner of the dented Rover, Bond sneaks into the security office to plunder through some old security footage. I used the word ‘security’ three times in the previous sentence, which might actually be setting some sort of bad grammar record.

At last Bond appears shirtless, emerging from the water sopping wet to stare at a pretty brunette on a horse. Call me crazy, but the man looks better with clothes on. Bond joins a poker game with his new target, Alex Dimitrios. Bond wins a lot more than Dimitrios’ money. He also walks away with the keys to his Aston Martin, and mounts his wife. Buuuuuuurn.

The bad guy’s hot wife lets slip that her husband is flying to Miami and continues to grind on Bond. Maintaining the illusion for the fun of a film is one thing, but there’s no way in heaven or earth a straight man would leave a woman like that lying in the floor. Especially not fully clothed. Which leads me to the assumption that deep down, James Bond is queerer than a three-dollar bill.

Anyway, Bond tracks down Dimitrios, kills him, and hilariously thwarts Le Chiffre’s plan to destroy the Skyfleet airliner prototype. Le Chiffre gets back at him by torturing and killing Dimitrios brunette vixen wife, who is no longer attractive when dead.

“Quite the body count you’re stacking up.” - M

M fills him in on the details of Le Chiffre’s background. Apparently, he’s been playing around with his clients’ cash. Thanks to Bond’s recent meddling with the prototype plan, Le Chiffre stands to get caught in some pretty hot water. For this reason, Le Chiffre has set up a high stakes poker tournament at Montenegro’s Casino Royale, and M wants Bond to attend. She then tells Bond they’re watching him, and quit screwing around with beautiful women.

Bond is on a train snaking through the tree-covered mountains of Montenegro when another woman in a stylish pantsuit plops down opposite him. She’s considerably younger and better looking than Judi Dench, but she doesn’t seem hot enough to be a Bond girl. This woman is Vesper Lynd. Vesper is a Treasury official whom M has sent to keep an eye on Bond. She’s kind of a shrew, but I suspect that Bond’s going to hit that anyway. Unlike Vesper, I remain unimpressed with Bond’s so called “perfectly formed ass.” Frankly, I’ve seen better. I’m sorry, but cool cars, guns with silencers, and swank suits do not automatically guarantee you a nice ass. That’s not the way the world works.

Vesper and Bond are in the adjoining rooms of their suite preparing for the first night of the tournament. Bond has taken the liberty of acquiring a revealing dress for her, and Vesper has selected a slick suit for him. Bond seems surprised that it’s already been perfectly tailored, but Vesper just smirks and assures him, “I sized you up the moment we met.”

Bond takes his seat at the table and Vesper enters to dazzle everyone with her cleavage. Once the group has played for four hours, they take a break. Le Chiffre heads up to his hotel room to romance his woman, but his terrorist friends are waiting on the balcony to rough them up a little. Le Chiffre assures them that he will have their money the next day, and the terrorists threaten to cut off his hand for the betrayal. Bond ends up killing the terrorists in the stairwell and getting blood all over his nice clothes, so he pops up to the bathroom to splash water on his wounds and drink a little.

Back at the table, Le Chiffre notices that Bond has changed his shirt and comments about this. Bond plays it cool, as usual. When he returns to the room, he finds Vesper, earrings and all, sitting in the shower shaking her head like a maniac. Surprisingly, her mascara isn’t running, which really makes me curious as to what brand she’s using.

Bond sucks on her fingers a little, which makes her feel a bit better, but she still needs him to sit around and be wet with her a while.

The tournament continues and once again Vesper’s got the girls out for all the world to see. Bond buys Le Chiffre’s bluff and goes all in, losing everything. Vesper’s all pissy with him, and refuses to give him the cash to re-enter the tournament.

*Bond approaches the bar and orders a martini*
Bartender: Shaken or stirred?
Bond: Do I look like I care?

Ha!

All at once, Bond grabs a knife and takes it to the table. His drink is delivered so he takes a sip, but he suddenly feels strange. He asks to be dealt out and excuses himself. He rushes into the bathroom and the camera work makes you nauseous if you have vertigo or some other kind of motion sickness. He pukes in the sink and stumbles out looking all crazy. He makes it to his car and is drenched in sweat. He’s totally going into some cardiac arrest business. He tries to defibrillate himself, but passes out and flatlines. Lucky for him, Vesper rushes out to help him. Like any real man would, he shakes off the heart attack and marches back to the poker game.

“I’m sorry. That last hand…nearly killed me.” – Bond

Not surprisingly, Bond wins the tournament and he and Vesper celebrate with a private dinner. Vesper leaves and Bond exits the building just in time to see her get kidnapped. He jumps into his car and hurries after her. He finds her lying bound in the middle of the road and swerves to avoid hitting her. His car rolls a ridiculous amount of times. Seriously. Way more than any rolling car should. Bond has been captured.

One of the henchmen cuts the seat out of a chair. Bond is stripped totally naked and tied to said chair. And let me tell you, his rear doesn’t look so fantastic from this angle. Le Chiffre comes out with a big old rope and smacks Bond in the bottom with it. At first I caught myself thinking, “Wait a minute… that wouldn’t be so bad. Like getting spanked, but with a heavy rope.”

But then I realized something. Due to the fact that the chair has no seat and Bond is totally exposed, his boys are taking a beating in a most unpleasant way. This makes me squirmy for him, the poor guy. I wish I could say that Bond takes this like a man, but his little girl screaming proves otherwise. Despite the physical pain, he’s mentally stable enough to continue taunting his captor, refusing to give up the access code for his winnings.

“The world’s gonna know you died scratching my balls.” – Bond

Le Chiffre proves he’s really a freak and goes after Bond’s junk with a knife. Luckily for all future Bond girls, Bond is rescued when one of Le Chiffre’s jilted clients storms in and executes Le Chiffre and all his men. Both Vesper and Bond survive the attack.

Bond wakes up in the hospital and reports Le Chiffre’s admission that Mathis is a double agent. He tells Vesper he loves her (“…you know what I can do with my little finger”) and they tumble around a hospital bed.

Cut to them frolicking in the sand. Bond is in a tiny bathing suit, and he tells Vesper he’s quitting the secret agent business. He fires off an email to M announcing his resignation as he and Vesper dock in Venice. I can’t help but wonder how he was getting Internet service in the middle of the ocean, but whatever.

Things are looking good for the pair and they smooch all over town. It is at this moment that M calls, asking Bond if he’s ever going to deposit the winnings into the account. Bond realizes that Vesper has stolen everything, and goes after her to beat her down. I always knew that skank was a shady lady. Never trust a skinny brunette.

He runs up on her handing a briefcase to some dudes. They spot him and run for cover in a nearby building that’s under renovation. Again with the construction sites. Bond shoots his way in, but blasts apart the flotation devices that are keeping the structure up. As it crumbles, Vesper is trapped in one of those elevator cages. Bond kills all the dudes and goes to save Vesper in the lift. Like an idiot, she locks herself inside. The cage plunges underneath the water, and Bond watches her drown while still struggling to get her out. Finally he gets her out of the water. He tries to resuscitate her, but she’s having none of it. Bond pants like a Neanderthal for a few seconds, then gets all moody and stares at her before picking her up.

M tells Bond that Vesper agreed to deliver his winnings to the bad guys as long as they let James live. Bond then discovers that Vesper has left him Mr. White’s name and phone number so that he might track him down.

Cut to Mr. White, arriving at his seaside mansion. His phone rings. He answers it, asks who’s calling, and is immediately shot in the leg. He crawls toward his mansion as the infamous Bond theme plays. You know who approaches with a huge gun and quips, “The name’s Bond. James Bond.”

CUT TO BLACK! THE END!

I must admit that I really enjoyed this movie. It’s the first Bond film I’ve ever seen in its entirety, and it lived up to its reputation by boasting beautiful women, exotic locales, dangerous stunts, and a secret agent who probably appeals to a lot of women. After seeing this one, I’m much more likely to watch some of the older Bond films, especially those featuring Sean Connery and Peirce Brosnan.

I give this one an A-, but a strong one.

Off in search of popcorn,

M. Hollywood