00 heaven
Deborah Ross
Casino Royale 12A, nationwide I’m sorry, but I’ve never liked a Bond film or even understood why everyone loves and anticipates them so. All that sameness. All those explosions that Bond just manages to throw himself clear from. Phew. That’s a relief. What a narrow escape. All those Bonds who weren’t so much ruthless secret agents as sleek male mannequins who could surely have done with stunt doubles for the acting scenes. But Casino Royale? It’s absolutely terrific. I can’t recall the last film that held me totally spellbound for nearly two and a half hours, and an action one? Never. You must see it. You must see it now, no excuses, and you mustn’t wait for the DVD. At last, a cinema film that is genuinely and properly cinematic. Get a babysitter. Fail to get a babysitter, put all sharp implements and toxic cleaning fluids out of reach and hope for the best. Just go see it, OK?
Casino Royale has pulled it off on all counts. It delivers the basic goods — the chases, the fireball explosions, the lavish glamour, the Aston Martins — yet it is also intelligent, moving, involving and sexy. You will be shaken, stirred, left to settle and then shaken and stirred all over again. I’m still shaking and stirring as I write. Why? Daniel Craig. He is stunning; a serious actor who not only takes the part seriously, but does so with astonishing presence, an athlete’s grace and an almost animalistic power that he manages so skilfully to temper with a softer soulfulness. When he is on screen you cannot look at anything else, not even the back of Mark Kermode’s hair. Craig’s face shouldn’t work, really. It looks like a pumpkin someone has taken a hammer to, but teamed with what are, surely, the most thrilling blue-blue eyes ever, it really does. He is no Pierce or Roger, largely because he is so fascinating to watch.
With Casino Royale it’s not so much a return as a new beginning. It’s based on Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, published in 1953, yet refashioned for the now. Yes, it acts as if all the other Bond films hadn’t happened, which I rather wish they hadn’t, and takes Bond back to his very roots; to when he’s a raw, far blunter instrument who makes mistakes, can fall in love and has just been awarded a licence to kill that he’s not particularly sure he wants. What is it going to do to him, as a person, in the end? This is a film not just about what Bond became, but also about what he could otherwise have become. It’s haunting and inspired in this way.
The film starts in the usual Bond manner, by which I mean it kind of erupts with a brutal killing in Prague — horrible; a man is smashed up then drowned in a washbasin — but from then on it’s pretty much, and rather bravely, character-driven. There are very few silly gadgets unless you count a pocket defibrillator; very handy, as it happens — and not a single shark pool or blinking computer-room from which some baddie is planning global domination. The baddie is Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), a banker who underwrites terrorism, has a weepy eye, a bloodcurdling way of clicking poker chips and a blonde girlfriend who does appear momentarily in a bikini but that, fellas, is about it on the eye-candy front. There is only one Bond girl, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), an accountant sent in by Her Majesty’s Government to keep an eye on Bond, and she isn’t really a Bond girl at all, being dark and mysterious and, get this, properly drawn. There is scene where, having witnessed a particularly brutal killing, Bond finds her, fully clothed, sitting in the shower, wet, scared, shivering. He sits beside her. He puts his arm round her. She rests her head against his big shoulder. It’s so sexy I could feel my knees buckle even though I was sitting down.
In what amounts to a lovely, clever and not-before-time reversal, Bond himself is, I think, the sex object. When Vesper first meets him she compliments him on his ‘perfectly formed arse’. There is even a scene where he emerges from the sea an homage, I would guess, to Ursula Andress and Halle Berry — in baby-blue trunks. I agree it’s a little bit camp but, boy, does it hit the mark all the same. I doubt there’s a woman who, after seeing this film, doesn’t then get into bed with her husband or partner, look over and go, ‘Oh, s—t.’ I know I did.* Craig can do it all. He can do tender and self-doubt, as well as cruelty, brutality and all the tough, macho stuff. He has reinvigorated a busted-flush of a franchise that, latterly, came to rely on bigger stunts, sillier gadgets and self-parodying, throwaway quips — rather as if even the franchise couldn’t take itself seriously any more in an attempt to obscure a complete lack of any new ideas. Go see it. Go see it now. No excuses. I even know of a kid who drank a whole bottle of Ajax and was right as rain in a week ...
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