Screenhead

Every great story has its beginning. Star Wars has The Phantom Menace, The Bible has “Genesis”, and the Hannibal Lector series have Red Dragon (I refuse to acknowledge Hannibal Rising). After twenty previous installments, finally the story of James Bond reveals the beginning of its long running saga, Casino Royale. I never really planned on paying for this movie at all. I don’t usually see Bond movies until SprikeTV runs their monthly ‘Best of Bond’ marathons, but I decided to take one for the team.

The free world is in trouble again. Corrupt banker Le Chiffre is illegally funding war-mongering terrorist cells and England is doing everything in its power to stop them. After blowing all of his client’s money, his only hope to save his life is a high stakes game of poker, which luckily he is very good at. The only way for England (and the world) to stop him and his organization is to enter the poker game and end his winning streak. With M:I-6 short on agents, they are forced to rely on a new unaccomplished and uncontrollable agent known as codename: 007. Hopefully he can follow protocol, maintain his cover, and not lose all of his borrowed poker money so he is able to stop Le Chiffre and ultimately end yet another source of terrorist funding.

The movie was actually rather good. I don’t know if I buy Daniel Craig as James Bond, but he’s definitely better than Timothy Dalton or Roger Moore (I’m a Brosnan fan myself. Shoot me now if you must). Something about his demeanor when he plays poker and kills terrorists makes him a believable ’super spy’ worthy of the martini and Aston Martin. Casino Royale had plenty of action and suspense, including an exhausting chase scene that even left me short of breathe. There was a torture scene painful enough to make any man cry. Something I always look forward to doing during an action flick is cry, so mission accomplished there. There was a disparity in the ‘Bond girl’ department, but I guess they were looking for that true romance angle instead of the serial fornicating, so I guess it worked.

The only real beef I have with the movie is the time period. That’s mainly because I know that Casino Royale was the first book in Ian Fleming’s series of James Bond books and this particular movie was supposed to be the prequel to all the other movies. Instead, the movie takes place in present time with all the new cars, the Internet, and current world issues. However, I quickly looked passed that and thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Even if it did run about 25 minutes longer than it should have.

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