Casino Royale

Casino Royale:

Bond is back! I loved the simple visceral violence and on the spot ingenuity that this bigger than life spy brings to the game.

I am a die hard 007 fan being weened on the original Sean Connery version as a youth and as my dismay about the direction that the franchise was going sank to new depths I found myself drifting from the alter of Ian Flemming. By the time my good friend and I witnessed the ice boat in, err... I can't even remember which Pierce Brosnan version it was... we just stared at each other in our theater seats in bewilderment, giving up our beloved super spy for lost.

Well I am here to tell you that my faith has been solidly restored. All of the usual trappings were in place; sex, violence, exotic locales, cool cars, and nonstop adrenaline fuel mayhem at every turn. But this Bond was stripped back. Most of the silly gadgets and cheesy dialogue was done away with. And while these has been a big part of the whole party since the beginning it was refreshing that these were used with some judicious discretion in C.R. It felt like the familiar MI6 but with several moments taken right out of the Bourne playbook. It was grand scale but did not feel burdened by the top heavy extravagances that so many of the previous versions suffered from. It is a lean fast moving tale that will leave you satiated just enough to be salivating for more.

I was very skeptical of Daniel Craig taking on the job. I thought Clive Owen was a shoe in but all the images of a waxed chested sex symbol rising from crystal blue Caribbean waves were washed away before the title sequence even commenced. Daniel Craig is Bond and hopefully it will be a long an fruitful union. The sheer athleticism, brutality, and quick witted cleverness of this new agent is a sight to behold. And although there are many familiar aspects to our hero we are treated to a few new twists that we have not seen coded into 007's makeup previously.

Shot deftly the film does not rely as heavily on the Michael Bay and Paul Greengrass machine gun blast of short edits to enhance the action sequences. It is a return again to a simpler time when a shot was composed on set and only enhanced in the editing suite. The opening act alone is constructed of a mixture of fast action closeups and long panoramic views are spliced together to create one of the most thrilling and destructive film clips in movie history. It is here that you get a real sense of the new Bond returning to the old ways of making it happen on the spot with out a lot of fluff. And it only gets better. I am reminded of look and feel of Ronin. Not a great film but one of my favorites for it's return to the old days of action cinema. Stuntmen and pyrotechnics were the order of the day and CGI was virtually nonexistent as far as I could tell.

There are many other pieces to this latest venture that make it so refreshing. One of my favorites is that the women who face of with Bond are not just there as decoration, to be condescended to or seduced. Bond has not come so far as to ingratiate himself to the feminists of the world I am sure but of the few female characters that appear across from him most of them hold there own and then some. Judy Dench is particularly enjoyable as M. And Eva Green's role as Vesper Lynd has a fair amount of depth.

The Aston Martin is revisted and there are a number of familiar bits and pieces from the vaults of MI6 but it is all woven together with the fresh new face of the contemporary Bond in a fun and thrilling joy ride through carnage, chaos, and hails of gun fire that will leave you with a smile. We will see if they can keep it up in next chapter, Quantum of Solace.

-Bitter MacGregor

If I was captured by some evil overlord and forced to have sex with one of the men who have played James Bond, I would have to choose Daniel Craig. I mean, explosions, hot boobs and storyline aside, you have to admit that Mr. Craig is very fuckable.
Unlike the Bonds of the past, I feel the direction this new Bond has taken is to try and give straight men a homo erection. I mean think about it. They get you all excited with bullets to the head, big fuck off explosions, brains splattering everywhere, hot married chick seduction, more explosions and then all of a sudden you get hot shaven man chest and whammy, where the hell did that little fella come from?
Don’t feel ashamed if you have the sudden urge to rub one out with your greasy popcorn hand. It’s perfectly natural in a Freudian kind of way. I’m sure a lot of you out there have been molested in the past and unexplained sexual urges aren’t foreign, so just go with it. Remember, they set you up with all that manly foreplay. It isn’t your fault.
In short, no matter what you learn about yourself, this movie is a must see, as in, you must see it. The new film has just come out and I can’t wait to see what my new friend Mr. Craig does next. I even have special rubber gloves for the occasion.

- The Plow