Casino Royale

Review by Loc

Making spy movies sure have changed. When I was a little kid, I heard about James Bond going to the moon, or fighting a dude with metal teeth named Jaws, or stupid crap like that. I mean, metal teeth? That dude would be called Grillz in today’s James Bond…what a fabulous idea! I digress, nowadays, stuff like The Bourne Identity amps up the real world drama of spy-vs-spy and leaves the hat-tossing killers to Austin Power camptastic-ness. So, where does Casino Royale fit into this whole mix? Quick hit: even this jumbled, steaming pile of poo has no idea what it is, there’s no way it expects you to figure it out either.

Those are some bold words for a quick hit. That’s because the good parts of this movie last about three minutes. Yup, opening up with a slickly filmed, black-and-white sequence where you get to see James Bond off a couple dudes before he was even 007, kinda cool. Granted, the little bits of plot presented here are relatively stupid, what kind of quota is that to achieve badass status? But, the camera shots are nice, the black-and-white, nice, even our introduction of the stoic Daniel Craig Bond, fits nicely in the setting.

Ah, but the movie is not three minutes. In fact, the following 141 minutes make you long for the good-old three minutes that started the movie. That’s because Craig remains about as charismatic as a tree stump. For the first hour or so, he was Bond, Mute Bond. You’d think this guy had befallen major tragedy to get him like this, but no, the tragedy is watching the rest of the movie. Zing! Regardless of how he looks, blonde, beefy muscles, ice-cold blue eyes, regardless of all those physical things that make him more of a print model than the iconic super spy, Craig’s turn as Bond doesn’t fit quite right. He’s a talented guy, and if you’re going for badass glare, he’s your man. However, when you’re looking for dazzling and debonair, Craig isn’t James Bond, he’s just a beefy dude wearing a small tux.

Yet, that’s not the worst part of this flick, not even close. The first two hours of the movie can be reduced to a really long foot chase with a dude who can bounce around like a cartoon character, and a poker movie. Poker movie? Why the hell is James Bond playing Texas Hold’em? Oh, because when writers came up with this stupid movie, poker must have been really hot and hip. Guess what? If you’re gonna center a good 40 minutes on a high stakes poker game, you’d better make it bigger than any WPT event we can watch on the friggin’ Travel Channel. Bond needs $5 million dollars to re-buy into the tourney, and no one will float him the money? $5 million? That’s like pocket change for any of the professionals we see on TV every week. Put it this way, when the poker game from the movie Maverick, is more entertaining than the centerpiece of this Bond flick, that’s pathetic. If I wanted to see some tense all-in action, I’d go watch Rounders, James Bond plays baccarat.

Which brings us to another major problem with this flick. Sure, it’s a James Bond movie, but nothing makes it James Bond except the name. You have an actor who has none of the physical traits associated with Bond, none of the smooth coolness of the super spy. You have him pandering to the audience with crap like a no-limit poker tournament when he should be playing high-stakes baccarat. He’s got his badass car, but he doesn’t drive it around. The gadgets are missing. I understand the attempt to bring Bond back to the real world and showcase the origins of his character, but the plot and story never get around to exploring the interesting stuff about Bond. That leaves him nearly mute for half the movie, and then trying to be a tough guy while a dude nut punches him repeatedly…what?

Sorry, I jumped to the last 40 minutes, where boring Bond turns into huh? Bond. Sticking to the “let’s show Bond completely out of character,” we get Bond tortured in some cargo ship. Lucky for us, the baddie figures stripping Bond and tying him to a wicker chair is good for business, how else you gonna crotch punch the guy with a giant knotted rope…what? What??

For the minor spoilers, Bond then finds himself recovering, coming in and out of consciousness. And then everything turns so strange, I didn’t even understand what was happening. He’s recovering in some peaceful villa thing, people come to visit him, people get tazed and carted away, the spicy female lead suddenly becomes his love interest, they manage to run away and enjoy the retired life…wait, what??? Plus, this whole convoluted mess takes about fifty time longer to tell than it should have, which leads to the final climax involving the slowest crumbling building in the history of mankind. And in the end, Bond becomes the cold hearted, untrusting spy we’ve come to know, which is the same exact stoic guy he was for the first half of the movie…uh, yeah.

Overall, this is a complete mess of crap. Critics may be slobbering all over this thing, but don’t be fooled, this movie sucked. When the giant, villainous plot is a poker tournament, it makes you long for the days of space-based laser beams. And if you’re all jazzed up about the character development, keep dreaming cause nothing like that exists in this movie. And as much as Daniel Craig is a cool guy, he’s not a cool Bond. If it were up to me, he’d be one-and-done as Bond. Out of the $10 million dollar buy-in, Casino Royale can’t even limp-in on the flop with a horrible $2 million dollar wager. It’s sad when I just provided more in-depth poker tension than the entire movie. Yuck.