Casino Royale (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition)
by Martin Campbell
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Jeffrey Wright, Judi Dench, Mads MikkelsenDirector: Martin Campbell
Brand: CRAIG,DANIEL
Composer: David Arnold
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0; Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.40:1
Running Time: 144 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-13
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- AC-3; Closed-captioned; Color; Dolby; Dubbed; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC
Movie Reviews of Casino Royale (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition)
Movie Review: The longest review of Casino Royale you're likely to see
Summary: 5 Stars
When it comes to follow-ups to a Bond movie, one must understand the needed presence of some certain unalienable elements. One always makes use of the capacity to build upon the achievements of the previous film. With Casino Royale, a film that sets itself apart from the others due to the very nature of it being the first mission for James Bond, a Bond who is still green in the field and happens from time to time to be a bit sloppy, the creators managed to not only keep the preset elements, but give them some substance as to what they mean as well.
Since the inception of the Bond film and its release back in 1962, the movie always began with a pair of tracing white dots following each other from left to right across a black screen. Once they reached the edge, the view through a gun barrel would pan in from the right following a well-dressed man walking in a plain white room. At the middle of the screen, the man in view turns and shoots straight ahead. Down pours a puddle of red blood, and the gun barrel wavers left and right.
The gun barrel scene is iconic. It sets apart the entire canon of Bond films from the botched rehash attempts made. It was the brain child of an incredibly talented visual designer named Maurice Binder, and has been lovingly adopted and modified over the last 44 years.
James Bond creator Ian Fleming made the impulsive mistake early on in his career to sell the rights to his first novel Casino Royale whereas he held onto the other novels until the arrival of Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. The result was both an agitation and a hidden blessing.
For years it was presumed that the movie Dr. No was Bond's first mission. It premiered in 1962 and portrayed a hardened Connery with a roguish panache and a smarmy self confidence that the world over has known to accept as the epitomic portrayal of James Bond. All fans of the novels know that Bond was not always perfectly in control though, and that flaw in temperament is evident in Casino Royale.
A few years ago when Sony Pictures bought out MGM Studios, suddenly all the cards fell into place as it were. The long pined-for rights to Casino Royale had finally come back into focus along with the companies that owned the rest of James Bond, and so began a tiresome heated production of one of the greatest gambles in James Bond history.
For starters, Sony Pictures is a giant in Hollywood that very much wants to make as much money as possible from anything it does. Therefore it felt that by milking the Bond machine for everything it had, they wanted to go nuts-to-the-door spectacular. Bond had become famous for its use of incredible gadgets, statuesque women and a fairly untarnished hero. Eon Productions, the company now in the hands of Broccoli's daughter Barbara and step-son Michael G. Wilson, wanted to take the less popular approach and show the hero in his early days . . . without the toys and the posh exterior.
As for how the proceedings between Sony and Eon transpired, I don't know truly other than that Eon got what they wanted in the long haul. And by doing so, one of the most fan-shaking decisions came about. They needed a new Bond. Pierce Brosnan carried the mantle for seven years. He had played James Bond - 007 in four very-well received movies. He was by every means still popular in the eyes of the fans of the films, but mostly in the eyes of the young fans who only knew the franchise led by him. Letting Brosnan go was a decision that brought about wide-spread panic and endless speculation about "The New Bond."
Then the name game began. Ewan MacGregor? Hugh Jackman? Clive Owen? Adrian Paul? Christian Bale? Web sites popped up like mushrooms after a hard rain. In particular was the rash of sites dedicated to the return of Pierce Brosnan. Many a fan, in my opinion, never took into account the notion that in Brosnan's last picture Die Another Day he was in his fifties and clearly showing signs of age in his face and in his hair. I'm just as much a fan of keeping along a talented actor, but the face needs to match the requirements of an ageless hero who moves with time itself.
Production on the next Bond movie was quickly becoming the largest gap between films since the wait between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye. Two and a half years passed before Eon Productions came forward and finally announced that Casino Royale would indeed be the film to be made. It was then six months following that the company made it public to the world who the next man would be. And his name was Craig . . . Daniel Craig.
Daniel Craig is an actor who bears little familiarity in the States. His greatest claims to fame were crime dramas in Britain. Only such pictures as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Layer Cake presented him to a small portion of film audiences in the USA, so his great reveal was understandably less than warmly received. But I prefer to remember history rather than let it fall to the wayside. Some 40 years ago when Cary Grant was an option to play Bond, the producers favored rather an unknown actor by the name of Sean Connery. It was a choice that even Bond creator Ian Fleming had serious doubts about. Just look how wrong everyone was.
And now, 44 years later, just look how wrong everyone was again. Having the man who directed GoldenEye at the helm, Casino Royale was the first Bond film in history to both redefine and reinforce the strengths of the franchise. The world will realize that Daniel Craig is James Bond, no matter how rugged, untamed, temperamental, inexperienced and brash he comes off.
And so we come back to the beginning. How does one reinforce the norms of such an old franchise while at the same time keeping it new? It goes into Fleming's description of what it takes for Bond to become 007. He needs two kills to his name. And so instead of starting the movie with the usual (and expected) gun barrel sequence, we instead get to see a black and white noir-ish scene interlaced with grainy black and white footage of a brutal conflict in a lavatory. We understand that these are to be Bond's first two kills. In a clever work of editing, we get to see the second kill before the first. Why? Because the first one ends with the view through a gun barrel of Bond standing against a white wall, he turns to face his opponent and fires one shot straight ahead. Crimson blood pours down the screen, and then we are treated to the opening titles.
Elation comes in so many forms, but none so much as being gratified so much by something that has kept you bated for four years. The gun barrel is a mere sequence that hardly lasts more than 15 seconds at the most. Casino Royale's decision to make the audience work for it is one of the best decisions that I could ever hope for.
The title sequence by Daniel Kleinman features psychedelic representations of silhouetted spies running amok amid lethal playing card and casino motifs. All is loosely matched to a subtle rock theme by Chris Cornell entitled "You Know My Name." It's a song that has the capacity to grow on someone after each listening. The titles also sustain and depart from the established norm. They contain silhouettes, which have become unanimous with the style of Maurice Binder. However a lack of any representation of the female form is seen, which lends it to more reminiscent of the opening title for Dr. No while also looking somewhat like the titles for Licence to Kill.
The silhouettes are of Bond and several nameless assailants in various forms of combat while at the same time being pitted at the mercy of lethal playing card accents. We are also treated to a teaser image of the Bond girl when a gun sight crosses over a queen's face revealing Eva Green who plays Vesper Llynd. At first she is revealed from the queen of hearts, but the other end of her motif is that of the queen of spades, a clever method of foreshadowing a nuance to her character. The titles conclude with a slowly on-walking silhouette that transforms into Daniel Craig giving a cold stare, very much a serious and fierce take on his ageless character.
The movie opens up onto a military camp in Uganda where we are first treated to the introduction of the film's villain Le Chiffre. He's a tall gaunt man bearing a familiar look to that of Peter Lorre (who played Le Chiffre in the 1954 inception of Casino Royale presented by the show Climax!) and a little bit of an evil Macaulay Culkin mixed in. This Le Chiffre has a few more tweaks though, a positive step toward making him look a bit more sinister. He has a scar over his left eye, he has a tear duct that cries blood and he habitually uses an inhaler. This man is the mathematically inclined banker and investor for several terrorist factions around the world.
In the same locale, we find Bond on his first mission as a double-0. He's commanded by MI6 to capture a suspicious, and horribly burn-scarred, suspect named Mollaka. Things go awry when Bond's aide blows their cover causing the incredibly agile target to tear off into a construction site with Bond in hot pursuit. The target is chased up scaffolding, over a couple of cranes and back down again through a Nambutan embassy where 007 finally get his man. Upon seeking his escape, Bond uses his prisoner as a wrecking ball until he ends up in a courtyard surrounded by armed guards. With everything to lose, Bond takes the risk of swiping his prisoner's backpack, shooting him dead and blowing up a series of gas tanks allowing for his escape; all of which is caught on surveillance camera.
It's a great achievement on the part of the film makers to let us believe completely that James Bond could die at any second despite us already knowing that he carries on to fulfill other missions. It's expert writing and directing, because I was constantly on edge wondering if this will be the one that finally ends the life of 007. But it's also more than that. There are instances of other movies with spies in them that look to copy what James Bond has done, coming never so close as to the grandeur and originality of what Fleming and Eon came up with.
The resulting mayhem causes 007 to make headlines as a murdering spy, turning MI6 into the laughing stock of London. M, played once again by Judi Dench, throws a considerable fit when she learns about Bond's failure and code violations. She becomes even more surprised to find that he's broken into her home to find him casually browsing through a suspect database on her laptop.
Film consistency continues with this remarkably hilarious scene. It shows that an untamed Bond is even more prone to insubordination that he would be as a tenured member of the secret service. The only reason he ever gets away with anything he does is because he's so good at his job, which his superiors constantly find themselves conflicted over. Bond's free thinking and unconventionality rob the straight-laced affiliates of prestige and success. Anyone else who violates a direct order or international code would face serious consequences. The apex of Bond's punishment though is nothing more than a terse reprimand.
Following the suggestion of M, Bond looks to keep himself out of the public eye (if only for a brief moment). He travels to Nassau based on a lead found from the material he swiped from the bomb maker he assassinated. His nonchalant meandering allows him the opportunity to fake his identity as a valet driver, and create a tremendous ruckus in the parking lot sending the entire security staff of a high-end hotel to investigate, thus leaving the surveillance office vacant and open for Bond's perusing leisure.
What makes me the most jealous of James Bond is his immaculate skill and grace in wandering about in places he doesn't belong. Not only does he do it with such stealth, but he's cocky about it too. Every environment becomes his playground the instant he steps into it.
While placing occupancy for a room in the hotel, he cleverly manufactures a charismatic lie to gain knowledge of the subject he witnessed in the surveillance office. His charm of course is placed on that of a lovely blonde woman, the easiest target for 007 to interrogate without making his efforts seem like an interrogation. After he finds out what he needs, he manages to successfully track the man, Dimitrious, down, beat him on a whim at a game of Texas Hold'em, win his gorgeous Aston Martin and seduce his smoldering Latin wife Solange.
In a surprising turn of events though, Solange is abandoned with only a bottle of Bollinger to keep her company as Bond whisks away to a Miami airport in an attempt to find what her husband is up to. They meet up in a crowded terminal where they share wicked stares and a fierce yet silent knife fight. Bond comes out the winner, and the loser of the battle waits out the rest of his time on screen unnoticed.
In the scuffle though, Bond loses track of the materials that he saw the man place in the terminal for the next contact to take up and carry out the terror plot. But with skillful use of ingenuity, 007 uses his last victim's phone to call up the next target in a crowd. Bond finds his guy and continues pursuit. The situation escalates when the man being followed puts himself behind a locked door. Bond calls up MI6 seeking assistance only to be met with smarmy bureaucracy. His quickly detailed explanation soon puts them into motive panic however just in time for Bond to realize he didn't need their help at all.
As is common with 007 films of the past, ridiculously exciting action set pieces materialize in unlikely places. This one shows no weakness or fatigue. Bond and an the intimidating terrorist play fisticuffs in the front seat of a fuel truck rocketing across the tarmac toward a prototype jetliner that our main villain Le Chiffre is counting on going up in flames so that he can make a killing on the stock market. Unbeknownst to him though, our man Bond comes through in a clench, putting him at a serious financial disadvantage.
Thus the first act concludes with M not so much apologizing to Bond for having a higher sense of what he was up to than anyone thought, but rather a commendation for strength of character. After all, if M were to ever thank 007, it would only be spoken in sarcasm.
Le Chiffre organizes a high stakes poker game at the title location in Montenegro to win back everything that he lost on the non-disaster. With great reluctance, James Bond is staked in the game by M, only because he's the best card player in the service.
For grand entrances of the famed Bond girls of old, this film seems to shift that stock to the lesser of the two. Solange was introduced riding a valiant steed across the beach. In the case of Bond's biggest crush though, treasury executive Vesper Llynd just sort of shows up and drops into a seat in front of James and announces, "I'm the money."
Bond retorts, "Every penny of it." (That's the only hint of Moneypenny in this movie; maybe in Bond 22 we'll see the real deal.)
What is surprising about this film (apart from other new things) is that Vesper's character is much more rounded out and multidimensional than the usual heroine. This is a woman that laughs, cries, sulks, seethes, screams and seduces. She has the same amount of dynamic that Diana Rigg did when she played the woman to be James' wife in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Perhaps in the process of getting caught up on the reverie of finally seeing my favorite film hero on the screen again I neglected to mention that the scenery and cinematography of this movie surpass even the greatest of installments in the anthology. The vistas are absolutely breathtaking. It qualifies as being one of the films in which the places that James goes are places I would desperately like to visit some day.
Casino Royale then steam rolls into the segment of the film which I refer to as the Fleming section. It's the content that was ultimately pried from the pages of Ian Fleming's first Bond novel. With the timely adjustments to fit the modern age, it plays out like an impressive cat and mouse game of high stakes gambling.
A sudden shift in the momentum is a dangerous calculation, but I'm slightly biased in this endeavor. I like Bond more for the subtleties in his character and the fancy quirks he uses to really upend others. One charming example is his disruption of the game to have a waiter bring what becomes his infamous Vodka Martini, shaken not stirred.
The director is wise though to not simply hash out a half-hour long poker game on the screen. Select cuts and recesses are installed to keep tempo moving. We have instances where Bond is actually forced to look after the villain and make sure he doesn't get ousted before the end of the game. A number of terrorists show up unannounced and voice their concern over Le Chiffre's ability to return their money that he lost.
Bond exercises his savage brutality as Vesper looks on in complete disbelief. A chilling shower scene later on builds credit to her character's inexperience in the film. We also get to see Bond for the first time in a great while in a truly perilous situation having much to do with his famous beverage. For a movie to make you believe that James Bond could die on his first mission is phenomenal storytelling.
The climactic scene at the poker table is heavily rewarding after all the drama that ensued with Bond going for broke, losing everything then being graciously reentered through the help of a long time (first time met) friend Felix Leiter. Aficionados of the game with balk at his highly improbable finish, but to them I give the middle finger and a smug, "Good day to you." It's a Bond movie. Stuff like that is supposed to happen.
To celebrate his grand victory, Bond and Vesper have dinner alone in Casino Royale's dining room. The elation is short lived with she steps away briefly only to be kidnapped. In pursuit of his lovely, Bond manages to accomplish one of the most heartbreaking of exploits . . . he murders his Aston Martin. To make matters worse, he gets kidnapped afterwards too.
What follows next is the scene that I feared to see because of the contextual nature of it. Like never before seen, Bond is brutally tortured. But like I had never seen before in my life, it became one of the most visceral and yet hilarious things I had ever witnessed. To merely explain it would do such great injustice.
Beyond the climactic turnout of that scene, we come to the slow-roving finale in which the story twists when you don't expect it to. Bond falls in love with Vesper but soon finds himself once again caught off guard. And like no Bond before, it actually sets itself up for a sequel.
Now what was that name again? Ian Fleming took the name James Bond from a book called Birds of the West Indies. It just so happened to be the name of the author. He chose the name because it had no great importance or attitude about it. It was just a name. Yet from mediocrity came something internationally famous.
It all began in a casino in London in the movie Dr. No. A non-descript man sits at a table playing baccarat. His face goes unseen. Across from him is a dark haired woman in a red dress. As the hand proceeds, he ends up beating her. She has an understandable look of irritation on her face. The man says to her as she's writing out her check for more money to stay in the game, "I admire your courage, Miss . . ."
"Trench," she replies. She looks up at him and adds, "Sylvia Trench." She then says to him, "I admire your luck, Mr. . ."
We then finally get to see his face as he slowly lights a cigarette in his mouth and replies, "Bond," and then mockingly adds, "James Bond."
In its inception, Bond, James Bond was meant only as a joke. When Guy Hamilton directed Goldfinger, the film that is commonly referred to as the one that set the Bond formula, the introduction was used again. The film to follow was Thunderball, the highest adjusted grossing Bond movie of all time. It was both an expansion on the Bond formula as well as a fist against all the critics who never liked Goldfinger, and the fist takes its form in the guise of a femme fatale who ridicules Bond for his playboy nature. She is the one to call him by the name "Mr. Bond, James Bond." And so from then on, in every film following the character of Bond always introduced himself that way at least once.
So what has become a tradition is surprisingly the greatest pay off in Casino Royale. With all the remarkable set pieces, action sequences, dramatic diversions and dreamy locales we get the famous introduction as the very last piece of dialogue in the movie.
Following through the end credits the words "James Bond Will Return" roll up from the bottom. A great sense of apprehension and relief consumes me. It means that I will get to see a great actor return to play Bond again . . . in two year's time.
I know exactly what I'll be doing on November 7th, 2008.
Summary of Casino Royale (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition)
Newly-promoted British Secret Service agent James Bond is sent on his first mission to find and destroy Le Chiffre, a financier who funds the world's terrorist organizations.Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 1-JAN-2007
Media Type: DVD
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