Bond is -not quite- Back

[Blowfeld]

01/23/07 by: WhtdoIKnow Ebay
Pros:
Daniel Craig, some fan-boy stuff
Cons:
Yet another *sigh* underachieving screenplay and mediocre direction, overly long, boring and unsatisfying
Gee, what a disappointment. I was thrilled to watch this one approach release and even more thrilled to see the almost universal critical acclaim that Casino Royale '06 garnered. I guess I should have stayed home. No. I m glad I made the effort to sit through it - and that really was an effort and a tribute to my love for the genre, what might have been, and what we might hope for in the future.

The James Bond film is certainly a genre onto itself. It is the father of all modern action films and the benchmark against which these are assessed in my book. Obviously, many talented film makers have taken us well beyond this starting point narratively and visually but the bones are still there if you know where to look. However, many more un-talented film makers and film deal makers have taken us into a cesspool of hack work where most 21st century action films firmly reside - and perhaps most unfortunately but predictably, the Bond franchise itself had long ago succumbed to this decline.

Which brings us to Casino Royale '06 - which was supposedly going to set things right. Well, they tried. The presence of Daniel Craig is a promising development. However, walking out of the theater, both WW and I were honestly confused as to how anyone could think this was a good movie much less heap praise on it. From some of the reviews I ve read, It doesn t seem to be sentimentalism - which one could forgive - but just another example of settling for less.

So clearly the idea here was to fix the Bond Film and certainly, considering the product over the last couple of decades, it needed it. So, what would you do? I think I d start by bringing in some new creative people. A new Bond is always nice but I m talking about behind the camera. The first major mistake here is the presence of the numbnuts screenwriters behind Die Another Day , Living Daylights and the horrifically bad Mr Bean Bond Johnny English - a real trio of action film turds. Then...these incompetents were given the difficult task - or perhaps vainly took it on themselves - of concocting a very challenging new recipe - and Iron Chefs these guys are not. Actually, I think this recipe has always been quite difficult to bring off simply due to the principal starting ingredient. Cue chairman Kaga lifting up the big metal cover - Tonight s secret ingredient: a 1950's Ian Fleming Novel! (sorry couldn t resist).


As every year brings us further away from that cynical, colonialist, paranoid time - these stories get harder and harder to shoehorn into a depiction of reality that is recognizable to most folks. This is something we could analyze forever but its just a hard row to hoe and why exactly would you want to do it? The early practitioners (Richard Maibaum, etc) realized this and came up with a recipe that avoided the acrid flavor and pungent lingering aftertaste of Fleming s narratives and dialog with extreme prejudice. Pretty quickly, the only recognizable aspects in the final dish were the basic Bond character, the titles, Fleming s wonderfully punning character names, and a few hints of spice here/there. You could certainly imagine making a film that really told the story of an Ian Fleming novel - and Casino Royale '06 vainly tries to do this - but if you really pulled it off, I doubt many folks would show up. Of course, those who put up the pounds for the current huge undertaking understand this only too well. And so our intrepid but incompetent writers were forced to attempt coming up with something that stayed true to Fleming's story and tone but kept the mouthbreathing masses entertained. This is quite a high order and the end result is as disastrous as you might imagine - a forced updated pastiche of Fleming s basic story of brutal betrayal mixed up with a variety of current day plot elements and tarted up for the fast food crowd.

A perfect example was the conversion of the central Chemin de Fer game to yet another boring and ridiculous Texas hold em tournament (Yikes, when will this poker fad end??). Its not clear at all why this HAD to be done. Baccarat is still played in casinos all over the world. It is simply Bond's game. Here, our new Bond is apparently the best poker player in the service (well, I believe that I suppose) and so gets the nod to challenge the arch villain and a B-movie group of other hangers-on in the "big game". I suppose there would even be ways to make this work but the set-up and writing in this section was just particularly bad - with goofy explanatory statements about poker "skills" + "theory" (??). Obviously someone has bought the books, videos, and drunk the poker kool-aid and is determined to justify themselves. I'm sorry, despite appearances this is just light years away from the suspense, elegance and beauty of the fall of the cards in a Baccarat game. They lamely insert one of Fleming's original gags about Bond concocting a martini recipe but it would have been more appropriate for him to order a special Vesper burrito from the Montenegro Taco Bell - "grilled hard on one side, two packets of "fire" sauce arranged in a V shape." By the way, another incredibly annoying and LAZY updating aspect was that the majority of "espionage" drama and plot development involves cell phone issues - Ye Gods, guys! Are you that imagination challenged?

Some of this updating was interesting to watch. Obviously you ve got to convert the unspeakably evil Soviet threat to something modern and this has always been a problem even for the master capitalists who bought and sold this product back in the '60s. Their concern then was for the future sales of these films in the USSR and so various nefarious individuals and organizations were cooked up to take the fall. As time went by, we ve of course had to shift our fear fetish to terrorists - usually depicted as being brown people with towels. Apparently really mean, really brown people with machetes are still acceptable as random disposable villains (probably awhile before this makes it to a cineplex in Somalia) but for the real bad guys, Casino Royale '06 creates beautifully nebulous individuals of no nationality or allegiance. These are the real men behind terrorism (apparently there is some good money to be made) that must be stopped at any cost. OK. Actually, one of the plot elements derived from this - that random terrorist acts are just part of securities trading scams - is at least rather progressive so I suppose I shouldn t complain.

Anyway, I think there are ways that a pastiche like this could have resulted in something that could be filmed to produce a decent movie - but that didn t happen here. The final product is just disjointed and despite some (honestly mediocre) action sequences actually quite boring. The other major problem was that, in the final analysis, Casino Royale '06 serves up the recipe rather than the dish itself.

Mediocre action director Martin Campbell ("Goldeneye" and a bunch of other crap) just doesn t seem to know what he is doing. As mentioned, the action sequences were, for all their jump-cut, lightning-paced flow, really quite forgettable. This just looked like left-over ideas from better pitches by Hong Kong action arrangers. The main problem, however, was that the dramatic action of the film - a very serious doomed romance between Bond and feisty co-conspirator Vesper Lynd ( West Berlin /divided allegiance anyone??..Oh.. Ian) - was limp, lifeless and at times jaw-droppingly false. This is really what Fleming was writing about in the novel and the bones of this in the screenplay are taken pretty much verbatim. The bi+ch is dead - classic Fleming Bond. However, I thought Campbell failed most miserably at telling this key part of story. To be fair, French actress Eva Green failed miserably herself in portraying Lynd - perhaps grossly mis-cast and lost - but a fatal flaw in the film nevertheless. As many of the supporting roles here (by good players) were also dramatic duds - Giancarlo Giannnini was particularly annoying (and please, please let Judi Dench get on with better things) - maybe a lot of this does go back to Campbell s deficits. How any director could be satisfied with the vast majority of screen time between Craig and Green s characters is beyond my understanding - it was just crap and stunk up the whole enterprise.

OK, what about the all-important question? Yeah, I thought Daniel Craig was actually quite good. He is a good actor and his physical presence and demeanor is close to perfect for the role. However, considering the surrounding mess here, this really isn t the all-important question after all. Bond may be back, but you have to put him in a good movie that tells a good story with good pacing in a believable fashion. Casino Royale '06 doesn t do it. I d like to say, considering Craig s presence that we might have better things to look forward to. However, I see that Campbell has predictably gotten the nod and is in pre-production on Bond 22" and, based on Zorro 2, I think things might get worse before they get better. One would hope that EON productions would take a tip from the early days and give some new writers/directors a shot at making this work again as things progress. A perfect example is provided by our modern version of the Bond franchise, Harry Potter. After a couple of pedestrian outings, the amazing Alfonso Cuaron showed up and gave us a great movie. One could only imagine what kind of Bond film Cuaron or Wes Anderson or - insert your choice here - would make.

[Dr. No]

They lamely insert one of Fleming's original gags about Bond concocting a martini recipe but it would have been more appropriate for him to order a special Vesper burrito from the Montenegro Taco Bell - "grilled hard on one side, two packets of "fire" sauce arranged in a V shape." [/i]

[James]

Alfonso Cuaron would be a great choice to direct a Bond film. Children Of Men was one of the best films of last year.