There is an amazing bit of bad editing in the ski chase where the editor makes it look like Bond is watching his own stuntman. It’s kind of shockingly shoddy.
I notice nobody has taken the plunge to review DIE ANOTHER DAY, so I'll take one for the team...
Deep breath...
Oh, dear, Die Another Day. What to say?
I like all James Bond films. Even the ones I don’t like. Yet there is something depressingly amateurish about Die Another Day, something that makes me believe the filmmakers just ticked a series of boxes as they constructed this vast tribute movie and ended up making a pastiche of the actual thing. It just so silly, from the futuristic sci-fi plot elements to the dud special effects, and jam packed full of overplayed characters, whether it’s the Bond girl, the villain or the South African loud mouth at a gene replacement clinic. The time span is all over the place. So too the location hopping. M globe trots around the world as if she learnt nothing from The World Is Not Enough. Pierce Brosnan suddenly looks old and tired. The grey hairs don’t help.
The movie starts off with another huge set piece chase which just bores the pants off me. They could have cut the PTS short when Bond gets unmasked and is threatened with execution – Moon could have had him dragged to prison and continued his insane plot regardless; all they needed to do was bin the father-son relationship, rather like the team should later have binned the step-brother relationship for Bond and Blofeld in Spectre. All this family background doesn’t add up to anything for the audience. It is just script writers trying to be clever. What would be clever of Purvis and Wade is if their scripts developed any tension, any humour or any intrigue. This one just doesn’t. My lips flickered into a smile once or twice and that’s about it.
Action-wise, like the last effort, everything is overdone. The sabre fight is dull; there is too much running around to create any suspense and it happens so early there is never any peril for anyone. The fight with Mr Kil and a barrage of lasers was done better in Logan’s Run in 1976, which tells you something - and not just about the rudimentary special effects. I mean, if you are going to go all sci-fi on us, the least the crew can do is make the SFX decent (like they did for Moonraker); here they are just plain rotten. The car chases are appalling and appallingly long winded. The climax is stupefyingly slow. You’d think they’d drop in a few decent jokes but they don’t. Several scenes end without the expected depressurising pay off [that is not a joke about the finale, by the way, so obvioulsy ripped from Goldfinger you almost weep] so the audience instead of chuckling begins to think they should take proceedings seriously, when they really shouldn’t. Not with an episode this outrageous.
Sadly, mostly, the film is an agonisingly straight affair. The whole exercise becomes a wink-wink to a knowing audience than anything actually enjoyable. Most of the original stuff is schoolboy double entendres and drama so lame none of it would seem out of place in a Carry On movie. There are some decent scenes. The stuff at the Cuban cigar factory was excellent. So too the set-to with Gustav Graves in his Icelandic hot house [Cornwall’s Eden Project]. But basically the film is, well, rather basic and crude, in script and execution, despite the big money thrown at it.
So why do I like it? I like spotting all the nods to the previous movies. I rather like Madonna’s theme tune, which like Duran Duran’s doesn’t try to sound like a Bond tune at all. John Cleese makes a fine go of Q, reinforcing my opinion he should have had the gig from Goldeneye. I enjoy Rosamunde Pike as the icily named Miranda Frost. Emilio Echevarria is fine as the sleeper agent in Cuba.
That’s about it, I guess. Let’s move on. By the end, I feel that was the producers’ opinion too.
DAD is fun, and it moves much better than TWINE does, it at least has a sense of pace and energy to it, and it feel appropriately Bondy in most places. Pierce shows up some of his acting shortcomings, but he is still a very effective star and being a charismatic lead in a film this size is not a task just anyone could do, and he certainly can. And the story is a decent one: Bond's capture is something new and exciting, and finally Fleming's Moonraker gets an adaptation. But there is also a feeling of tackiness to the film: the dialogue is not classy like a Bond film should be, the music is rather thin, the sets (despite costing an absolute bomb I'm sure) look cheap and fake - all that blue plastic ice and dry ice, and the locations aren't massively lush: I think this is the only Bond film where the main cast don't appear in any of the overseas locations the film is set in. I don't begrudge a Bond film using UK locations, but when Korea looks exclusively like a forest in Hampshire or somewhere and a very obviously Cornish clifftop, then something's gone a bit wrong.
I would still rather watch it than TWINE as it is fun and it belts along like a cartoon, but Bond should feel like hokum wrapped in the most expensive and classy silk robe, and this feels like Bond by way of TK Maxx. It's the Batman & Robin of the series, and the producers wisely saw that a course correction was necessary.
This is trying to be MOONRAKER but without the finesse or tonal control.
The good:
The idea of Bond being captured and held hostage/tortured for 14 months is a great hook, and the opening sequence is pretty decent to establish that hook.
The overall idea of changing a North Korean to an Englishman works. It's a sci fi element for sure but it's really just an update of the whole idea of plastic surgery, which we saw in the double making scenes for Blofeld in DAF. I could roll with this...of all of the sci fi elements in the film, this one worked.
Great casting of the North Korean actor and his English version, played by Toby Stephens. If you look at them in terms of body build and facial structure, you could buy that they're the same guy with different patinas.
The overall plotline ain't bad, actually. On paper, it's decent enough and the narrative throughline is structurally sound.
While the second half of the film (once they hit Iceland) is completely off the rails, the first half is honestly pretty darn good.
If you ignore the bad CGI and goofy sci fi crap, the action sequences are pretty well put together in terms of direction and editing. I generally never felt like an action scene was going on for too long and I was engaged enough with the action to maintain focus without wanting to surf my phone. I take issue with the speed ramping/slow motion inserts but I'll cover that below.
I like Rick Yune's Zao. He's got presence and I love the embedded diamonds in his face. I wish he'd had more to do as he felt underutilized.
The bad:
Terrible CGI. I mean, really terrible CGI. The surfing scene is especially bad but the climactic scene with the disintegrating aircraft didn't look good either. This isn't just a retrospective evaluation of the effects work at the time...they looked bad in 2002.
The speed ramping/slow motion stuff doesn't feel Bondian. Bringing in those elements is a completely different aesthetic and they really don't belong anywhere near the Bond franchise. The good news is that they haven't reappeared since then.
The acting is wildly inconsistent. Halle Berry can act when given the right material (and she did win an Oscar) but she's terrible here. Thank God we never got a Jinx spinoff. Toby Stephens is also a much better actor than you'd surmise based on his performance here. Madonna can't act and her cameo is painful to watch. Michael Madsen is his typical terrible self (he's great for Tarantino, terrible for everyone else). A lot of the other supporting actors aren't really up to snuff either.
The sci fi elements jump the shark. Most of the Bond films have pushed credibility with the gadgets but none have gone as far to stretch the illusion of reality like this one. The invisible car is of course the worst offender, but the electrified suit and the laser beam watch are too much as well. The training scene where he has VR glasses is also too much, although the Moneypenny bit at the end makes for a great comedic stinger.
Not a great David Arnold score. It's not terrible but it's also not his strongest.
The Madonna song is terrible.
More of a nitpick but something the wife and I were laughing about: When Halle Berry is flying the plane during the climax, all of the controls are in English (not Korean) and the alarm going off is in English (not Korean). That just feels like a lazy mistake.
I prefer this to TWINE for the simple fact that this is rarely dull. Things move here.
While this thing made absolute bank at the box office, I'm glad that EON decided that they needed to get back to basics with the next one. While I love MOONRAKER, the franchise really needed FOR YOUR EYES ONLY as a follow-up to reset things. Similarly, we needed CASINO ROYALE after this one.
I saw most of the pre-credits last night on telly, no more.
David Arnold's score is stirring but feels a bit beleaguered and stressy - sort of like Brosnan's Bond, I guess. It's not empowering, sexy, swaggering stuff. It seems a bit minor key always.
The trio emerge from the waves in close-up - always looks a bit odd, like they're a cartoon or against a phoney backdrop.
Brozzer looking a bit jowly. Have to disagree with @HarryCanyon about the actor playing Moon and Toby Stephens - the former seems a lot smaller and no way can I buy it's the same person, on repeat viewing there is no tic, no tell-tale giveaway in gesture of the kind we see in Face/Off that makes you think: 'A-ha! It's the same guy!'
Now, some of the dialogue here is clever but in the cinema I couldn't hear it too well. Why does Bond seek to antagonise when he is undercover; he can do that at Zorin's cocktail party I guess, or Carver's press do but it's not smart behind enemy lines. It could be done more subtly, Bond's observation of Moon's cool cars. The ensuing chase is marred because it seems Bond's hovercraft has had the drawbridge drop on it, or is blown up several times, then next shot you see, oh, that's Bond still so he wasn't killed. I don't know if this was delibarate but seeing your hero killed a few times in a minute does undermine the whole thing a bit.
Someone could figure out how much exposition dialogue each of the pre-credits has. Virtually none in FRWL, a bit more in GF and TB. Very little in OHMSS, Or in LALD, if you ignore the UN speech stuff which we are meant to do. AVTAK also has very little dialogue until the last 30 seconds. And what there is back then is more small-talk stuff. I did prefer all that but since then there seems to be a lot of chin-wagging in the pre-credits, too much 'Pay attention, 007!' for the audience.
The deliberately decolorised cinematography doesn't really appeal though I can see why they did it, the score isn't mixed properly, the back projection could be charming but isn't really, and Moon should get plenty of shots on Bond but keeps missing. I suppose this is a new variation on the pre-credits of OP and TND and not all bad in a way but it's another long-winded intro.
TND must be one of the talkiest pre-credits, in terms of ratio to action, but TWINE's was also pretty busy. Actually, QoS must have the least talky pre-credits ever! Marred by a lousy edit at the end as it segued into the awful song.
DAD was yet another Bond that was rewritten during filming so the dialogue is not very witty - it had to be of a 'first draft will this do' variety. I can watch chunks of it but mostly it blows chunks. It feels like a very self-satisfied film. Feels very American too, in that the London we see is kind of how American cinema portrays it, all stuffy old gents in a gentlemen's club, all a bit Mary Poppins.
Back in 2002 the reviews weren’t suggesting that this was the worst Bond movie ever. They didn’t hammer every angle that could be found. They didn’t predict the end of the series unless things changed and smartish.
Having enjoyed TWINE very much I looked forward to more. The PTS wasn’t brilliant (strange lighting/colouring, average action) but at least it ended promisingly – Bond caught prisoner, what the hell was going on? The title song was dreck, the worst one yet (I didn’t know then that worse was to follow). However, being told after it that our man had been in captivity being tortured for 14 months was a big step in a new direction. The producers wanted to take Bond where he’d never been before, and not geographically. The fakeout where we think he’s going to be executed, the prisoner exchange, the whole business about him being suspected of leaking – this was different and had potential.
The Hong Kong hotel sequence was amusing and made a sensible enough link in the chain to send Bond on his way to Cadiz … sorry, Cuba … for the most hopeful part yet – the cigar factory/sleeper agent segment. Very Fleming, Raoul was the best local agent-type we’d had in years. It was shame he didn’t get more than two scenes, there was untapped potential there if the plot had developed differently.
Things started to go downhill from this point. The entire dialogue between Jinx and Bond when they meet was, as has been said, more suited to a Carry On movie. It doesn’t take much to picture Babs and Sid there. The beauty clinic action was more interesting, and the London scenes that follow had a definite sense of someone having read Fleming’s Moonraker, which can’t be bad. The MI6 characters all follow rapidly with the sense of someone checking the names off a list.
And then we get to Iceland and (I don’t know about in screen time, it’s just the way it feels to me) the second, lesser half of the movie. Toby Stephens wasn’t the worst Bond villain (Joe Don Baker still existed) but a weak one nonetheless – he’d do much better when he switched to playing Bond on radio.
The film continued to descend. I had been looking forward to the car chase but it was a let down, followed in short order by the ice parasurfing or whatever it was scene. Next came the Korean scenes and the cliched airplane fight(s) and the escape from the CGI plane. By this point I was disappointed but not to the extent others seem to have been. Still, this rewatch wasn't painful since I hadn't seen it in a while.
The music and Brosnan’s performance were both definite downsteps from TWINE but those were solvable. Many of the characters were, too, but again that was solvable. I didn’t expect what was to happen.
Does everyone like Raoul in this then? I'm a bit surprised, I always found him oddly charmless, like a really hollow, thin attempt to make another Kerim Bey.
I couldn't hear what he was saying in the cinema. Some of the dialogue 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' is not original, I know people can recite unoriginal lines in real life but the actor has to show something that indicates the character is doing that, if you see what I mean. I did like the stuff in the cigar factory, though it's barely a minute. The film doesn't lean towards people like that, it leans towards that Tarantino American guy.
Brosnan’s final turn and it seems like he’s growing into the role a little. He’s looking and acting like an adult instead of a cocky young man and he even delivers a pun with panache, “saved by the bell.” The PTS is terrific, full of action and exactly what is needed in a Bond opener. The titles are excellent again but unfortunately the song is awful, so Brosnan ends his tenure without a decent song amongst them.
DAD reminds me very much of DAF (and not just of some plot similarities). As with DAF the first half is excellent, the prisoner exchange, the meeting with M, his escape, the hotel scenes, the Cuba section, the fencing duel and Q (special praise for John Cleese here) introducing the gadgets are all well up to the mark. Unfortunately, as with DAF, the second half is boring old hat stuff we’ve all seen before and the CGI effects are appalling. The fact that Miranda Frost is a double agent was telegraphed from the beginning (MI6 got very lax in the Brosnan era).
I enjoyed the echoes of some of the novels working their way into the script. I didn’t enjoy M having such disdain for Bond throughout the four movies, it was a mistake by the producers to have Dench behave in this way just because she’s a woman and thinking that she had to be cold and cynical because of that to show authority. The Moneypenny virtual reality scene was dreadfully embarrassing.
Brosnan is by far the worst Bond to date, would his successor fare better?
Before going on to the Craig years, I'll say the action scenes in TWINE are the only ones of his era where I can generally go along with it, where they are largely believable. All Brosnan 's other films had action designed it seems to me to test your loyalty or fealty, as if to say, okay, are you prepared to go along with this? It's all nonsense really. I mean, I know steering a speedboat through a fish restaurant isn't that likely but generally I could go along with what I saw on screen.
DAD is one of my least favourite Bond films. There, I said it. It's too much in several ways. Too "modern" editing makes it look dated now. Several of the gadgets are too sci-fi, especially the car. CGI is used too much, and too badly. Jinx speaks almost exclusively in double-entendres. The Madonna song simply isn't Bondian. There are some positives in there, such as the ice palace and Rosamund Pike. In fact I think the potential for a good film is there. The script had to be fixed with the worst excesses removed, the director and the editor should've been removed and replaced too.
This week it's Casino Royale and, well, it's awesome isn't it? They rethought what a Bond film can be, how Bond himself can be portrayed, and although it was kind of a shock to see it, it was shocking in the best possible way, because suddenly we had a Bond film which acted as a real film, if you kind of know what I mean. It had drama, real emotion, and actual shocks which really made you feel something. People were swept up in the story and engaged on a level a Bond film had never really done before; plus it still thrilled audiences in the way a Bond film should with several standout action sequences (the opening parkour chase being one of the best action scenes in any Bond), and it didn't forget the jokes too, although they obviously weren't on the level of silly we'd seen at some points before. And I think Kleinman produced one of the all-time best Bond title sequences too: every time I see it it just gets me more pumped to watch the whole film, yet again!
Daniel Craig is obviously a huge talking point of the film, and the only person to play 007 who received a Bafta nomination for playing the role, and it's easy to see why. He totally owns the film from the first minute onscreen and is one of the most compelling Bonds we've had. Bond was suddenly vulnerable and capable of getting things wrong, but although 007 onscreen had long ago become a kind of perfect, invincible hero, somehow changing this aspect didn't make him feel any less like Bond. He's got this way of making you able to read exactly what he's feeling without seemingly moving his face, which is pretty amazing, and also more convincing for a spy who wouldn't be telegraphing his emotions to everyone around with a raised eyebrow. It was perfectly judged: he brought his own cold, economical manner to playing Bond the blunt instrument, but importantly he didn't forget to bring the huge swagger and self-confidence that Connery introduced so his feels completely like James Bond 007. But when his armour is stripped and his heart broken, we really feel it too.
It's not perfect: I think the film is missing a bit of style- it's better than DAD on that front but could be bettered (and I think it was). The score is decent but Arnold still brings that slightly thin and basic feel for my money; and on the plot front there's some aspects which feel very hazy and undefined to me. I still don't entirely get how Vesper's betrayal works, how Le Chiffre can get the money (and like most Bonds it's just best not to think about the plot too much), and Mathis' betrayal feels very fudged, to the extent it's actually quite confusing whether he really is a baddie or not. It feels like they end the film without actually deciding that. Also for me, the final sinking house action scene feels like the makers lost confidence in what the film was doing and squeezed in more action where I think the audience actually just wanted to get to the Vesper plot because that was the more compelling bit. Plus, I'm still not 100% convinced by Eva Green: I don't think she's quite the best person for it and some of her line deliveries are quite odd. I kind of wish they hadn't used up Rosamund Pike on the previous film.
It's the 20th anniversary of its release this year and it's still as good as ever. Did they somehow produce the best film in the series, 21 movies in? I think there's certainly an argument for it. And did it also introduce the best Bond performer of the lot too? There's absolutely an argument for that as well.
I haven't watched CR yet and may not have the time this week, but what you write chimes very well with me. I remember how anti-Craig I was when he was announced and how sceptical I was going into the cinema. However, I was cheered in advance by the title and the return to Fleming and I honestly believe that is one of the reasons the movie works so well.
Like yourself I do have reservations. I dislike the sequence where Bond's heart stops, although the poisoning was a good angle, and I feel the fight with the Obanno and his henchman is a bit overly bloody for where it fits into the narrative. I don't dislike the collapsing pallazzo scene, but I think it is confusing and almost feels like an add-on. The book of course was simply a gentle slide to Vesper's betrayal and death. I think the writers wrote themselves into a corner here by having Bond suspect Mathis has deceived him - because he can't ever suspect it is Vesper, he loves her after all - it extends the coda unnecessarily, so they thought they needed a spectacular end. In fact, you could cut out quite a lot of Bond's recovery and just jump to the stuff in Venice.
As you say, Craig really nails it in this one, which kind of leaves him no where to go in the next four. Unlike you, I really get Eva Green and her portrayal of Vesper. Her exterior gets broken down by the experiences at CR and with OO7 and this comes across in descending stages.
It was good to have Fleming's final line. For us as cinema goers, it was great to have the final line we got, delivered with fresh vitality and urgency.
Overall, CR is right up there for me. Top 5 for sure.
I tried to be objective about this one and see it fresh, divorced from any of my pre-existing positive opinions from prior viewing experiences. I really tried. Flaws and all, this really is one of the very best entries in the entire franchise.
The good:
The action is first rate. Martin Campbell and the second unit team choreograph and block everything clearly. The action sequences flow and are easy to understand in terms of location geography and what's actually being presented with one exception, noted below. Everything feels gritty and real, aided by the fact that Daniel Craig looks physically able to do the things presented on screen. The stunt doubles don't stand out so much so it's easy to get immersed in what's going on.
The acting is solid from everyone with Craig being particularly good here. His verbal and physical acting is all on point, and his overall Bond demeanor is fun in a dismissive/snarky way. You can see elements of Dalton and Lazenby in his take.
The casting of Mads as Le Chiffre was genius. He kills it and ended up successfully launching a career in English language films.
Eva is fantastic as Vesper and has great chemistry with Craig. All of their scenes together work and are compelling enough to support the necessary plot contrivances.
The plot is strong. Some of the narrative before they get to Montenegro is clunky (it's all setup) but nothing that's really jarring. I suspect that some stuff from the first act was edited out to keep up the pacing and get Bond to the casino quicker. Regardless, the film is almost perfect from the time they get to Montenegro until the ending. I have issues with the Venice climax running a bit long but that's about it.
Great score by David Arnold with a killer, ballsy theme song by Chris Cornell. Let's get another rocker for Bond 26, yeah?
The callbacks to the prior 20 films are fun. The appearance of 'Goldfinger' and 'Bambi and Thumper' in Nassau are delightful, and the Aston Martin DB5 is reintroduced in a fun way. Him showing indifference to getting a martini 'shaken or stirred' makes for a good joke.
The film ends perfectly. Bond is Bond at that point and gets to deliver his classic 'the name's Bond...James Bond' line as a capper. The credits roll on an arrangement of the Monty Norman theme. Just awesome.
The not so good:
Again, I find the narrative for the first act to be kinda clunky. There's kinda a sense of 'what's going on here?' to the proceedings that could be clearer. Again, I suspect that this first act was edited down somewhat to get to Montenegro more quickly, but it really feels to me like another 5 minutes of plotting would benefit things greatly.
As with a lot of Bond films, the climactic fight goes on too long and has too many moving parts. It's all so busy and frantic inside of the collapsing building in Venice. Where all prior action scenes were shot and edited beautifully, this scene kinda has a 'flailing arms' patina that just adds to confusion. The airport scene in the first act kinda goes on a bit too long as well but it's always clear as to what you're seeing at least.
That's really about it for complaints. It's definitely in the conversation for 'best' film in the franchise. At this moment and with this franchise rewatch, I'm pretty comfortable putting it in 3rd place (so far) but honestly, it could be in the #1 spot. The top 4 are all about equal.
It was good to have Fleming's final line. For us as cinema goers, it was great to have the final line we got, delivered with fresh vitality and urgency.
Yeah, i think adapting the novel properly, having Bond at the end on his own and betrayed, with the 'bitch is dead' line, and yet still managing to find a way to make the audience leave the cinema with a spring in their step and on a high is kind of one of the most amazing tricks this film pulls off!
The series rebooted in this one and Daniel Craig was chosen as the new Bond. I’d seen him ten years earlier in the fabulous television series OurFriendsInTheNorth and if you had told me then that he would have been playing James Bond I would have laughed out loud because he doesn’t look like a Bond, though his acting skills were all there to be seen and admired.
James Bond earns his 00 status in a black and white PTS, and very atmospheric it is, with fight scenes of the like not seen since the days of OHMSS. The titles are superb and the song is excellent, one of the very best. Arnold’s score is very good, the best since TSWLM. The writers adapt the novel very well, keeping the core basis and adding good action scenes and also changing the central gambling game from the boring game of chance baccarat to the skilled game of Texas Hold’em poker. Although there are some moves that are not etiquette and/or allowed, and the final hand wouldn’t play out like that by skilled players, it works cinematically so can be easily overlooked.
I find CR to be like OHMSS (the best of the canon) in lots of ways. Both films:
…serve as the entry point to a new actor as Bond
…are closer to the source novels than any of the others
…have Bond fall in love only to have her die at the end
… see him intend to resign from MI6
…follow outlandish entries
…have Bond become vulnerable
…at the time they were the two longest movies
The are down points to CR - it does actually go on too long, they could have lost the sinking house scene and just had Vesper committing suicide as in the book, it would have been a much stronger ending. Also, Judi Dench is back as M. It’s confusing to have an actor playing the same role in a reboot, and she’s excactly the same as in the Brosnan era (well of course she is as she gives the same performance in every film she makes), and no Q and Moneypenny. But all in all it’s a very, very good entry.
Bond was certainly back in action, they couldn’t mess it up in the next one, could they?
So, where to rank it? I prefer the more serious movies but it doesn’t quite have the rewatchabilty factor of some of the others. It does hold a sentimental place for me in my heart as it was the last Bond movie I saw with my father in the cinema before he passed away and he introduced me to Bond in 1962 with DN when I was just 6 years old. Taking everything into account it goes in at #4.
I think CR isn't "just" a great Bond movie, it's a great movie in general. There are very few things that could've been improved upon. I feel the line: "The b*tch is dead" could've had more impact: I don't know what was needed to give it more punch. Maybe a change in the script or a different line reading, probably both. But this is nitpicking. CR is probably the best Bond film yet.
I love the 'bitch is dead' line, because we know straight away that Bond doesn't really mean it, and he's got his armour back on. I'd say it's perfectly delivered.
I'm right back from seeing CR. The movie premiered in Norway tonight. First I'll eat some humble pie. I was wrong. Not about Craig, like some others should do! I allways gave him the benefit of doubt, and he rewarded that chance fully. He is brilliant and at least as good as Sean Connery was. No, the one I underestimated was Martin Campbell. I thought he was the weak link in the movie based on his previous movies that's been passable at best. This must be his masterpiece and he proved very much up to the task.
I have allready commented on the lead. The rest of the cast is also spot on. Particularely Eva Green is superb. Diana Rigg is now the second most interesting Bond girl ever. I also liked the way Felix Leiter was introduced. He came as a natural and vital part of the story and and the information about him was need to know. He is still a bit of a mystery to the audience. I hope Moneypenny and Q will be introduced in simmular fashion in the sequels.
Now the story. I liked the pre-credits sequence very much. There was no need for a huge breathtaking stunt because the black and white brutallity of the two first killings was enough to make the audience sit up and pay attention. Still, I feel it was a bit short and had a tone that might be too different in tone from the rest of the film. The gunbarrel at the end was a fine way to mark the new start of the series.
The title sequence was very good. It was new and fresh but still very much in the tradition, much like the entire film. The title song is one of the few weak parts of CR. Sorry, it could and should have been better.
The rest of the plot was very strong for an action movie. I liked the dialogue and the fact that Bond is both an assasin and a spy in this movie, something we have seen little of in the past. The humor was good. It was used sparingly but to good effect. The best humourus lines was during the torture sequence, strangly enough. Even better, the humour didn't destroy the tense and painfull scene!
The action was just like it should be, believable and unbelievable at the same time. The best action scene was the chase through the construction site. The freerunner was acrobatic. Bond was very agile and fit, but had to make up for his shortcommings as a freerunner by brute strength and smartness.
Now for the ending. I'm not sure it was made clear enough to the audience that Vesper commits suicide. The scene is still emotionally very strong, but it should have been made clearer that she takes her own life. I also feel the end line from the novel is blunted too much. "The bitch is dead" -line in the book was incredibly cold-hearted and heartbreaking at the same time. In the movie it looses inpact by being in the middle of the dialogue and by M defending Vesper. Perhaps it was neccesery to do it like this to humanize Bond and Vesper, but also to get the "My name is Bond, James Bond."-payoff.
But what is it with mr White? I thought he was going to be the Blofeld to Craig's Bond - the guy he fights for the next movies. If he is, something dramatic must happen while the end credits roll!
This is still the best Bond film for very many years, probably ever. It's hard to compare to the first films in the series, because films and the world was diferent then. I will give Casino Royale 006 points. I considered giving it the top rating, but I chose not to because there should be room to improve on (near) perfection!
I forgot a couple of point i would like to have made in my review. First, the locations. I think the locations were only gritty when they needed to be. The african guerillas shouldn't live in a castle anyway. When the locations could be lush, exotic and colourfull, they were. This is one of the ways CR is different from the Bourne films, just like it should. That goes for the whole film, it takes the kinetic action from Mission Impossible and the "realism", the good stories and the emotional impact of Bourne, but keeps what makes it Bond.
I don't know any more about poker than Vesper did, but I still found the poker scenes exiting. They don't slow the movie down too much and without them the movie just wouldn't be Casino Royale. The end
What's interesting about digging into the Casino Royale archive is just how many members were posting back then, now we are a dwindling number...
Having read the novel countless times I was thrilled to find more Fleming on the screen since 1981 and FYEO. I thought they would never film the torture scene, and was proved wrong. And fanboy that I am I was very happy to see "Based On The Novel By Ian Fleming" in the credits for the first time since the 1960s. (Turns out for the last time, too, to date anyway.)
My late father enjoyed it, though he made the comment that "It’s a good film, but the hero's name didn't have to be James Bond". I could see what he meant. Just a few tweaks and the hero could be any of a dozen other cinematic spies, eg no Moneypenny or Q. That impression was aided by the unfamiliar actor in the lead role.
David Arnold's score was terrific, with "City of Lovers" nearly matching Barry at his best.
I can never make up my mind whether it's the best Bond film of this century (so far) or SF is. I'd probably prefer this because of the Fleming content, but after a viewing of SF (and one is coming soon) I have been known to change my mind.
I didn't like Casino Royale at the time and I don't like it now. I'm afraid I'm all a bit 'green eggs and ham' about it.
It was supposed to be a reboot in the manner of Jason Bourne - but I like The Bourne Identity and I don't like this. The first Bourne film felt more like a Bond film than this, it awoke the same emotions, the same thrills. I had Doug Liman down as a potential Bond director after seeing Go but he went this way instead. Jason isn't a happy chap, I mean he has reason not to be but he still seems happier than Craig's Bond. Admittedly it's the thing I commented on reading Slow Horses or even watching Tuner - inept or out of sorts leads who, we find, have a sudden hidden talent or superhero ability. At no point in CR do I really feel like cheering Craig's Bond on, I don't find him too relatable.
Admittedly, the Bourne series doesn't have legs - it went to roughly four or five movies but then you can say the same about Craig's tenure. For you see, once you have your first film as a sort of origins or coming-of-age story, it is hard to do sequels because it feels like that story has been told and done and dusted. The narrative centre of gravity is skewed for future instalments. You even got this with Brosnan's GoldenEye, also by Campbell, of course - all this 'sexist misogynistic dinosaur' stuff and folk popping up to have a go at him, along with the Cold War theme, it just feels like by time the film is over, so is Bond as well. I love Superman: The Movie but while its sequel isn't so bad it just feels a bit off, because the first film is an origins story and the second feels like its going through the motions; all the other movies feel like add-ons.
This is something the Amazon team really need to think about, because an origins story pretty much writes itself but makes everything harder for everyone else following on. The story is done.
Craig I liked in Layer Cake but again, that feels more like a Bond movie than this does. The scenes and villainy are more outlandish. The look of the film I prefer. As with Bourne, I could quite happily sit down and watch some of it for an hour on telly if it came on.
And I liked Eva Green in that movie about the 1968 Paris riots which is never really shown on telly now. I don't really love her in this but everyone else does so I guess that's just me. It's the way she and Bond guess each other's backgrounds because it's in the script - but he doesn't pick up on her French accent or anything.
Things about it feel off, because much of it seems written for Henry Cavill - yet another example it seems to me of the producers ballsing things up, because script doctor Paul Haggis was talking about how it was going to be Cavill in the role but a month or so before Craig was announced. So we have the 'I knew it was too soon to promote you' line, or Bond being mistaken for a car valet, or his holding still, almost nervous, as he asks out hottie Solange, or his thrill at trying on a tux for the first time... all this seems written for a young Cavill, not Craig. I'm not arguing to say the role should have gone to Cavill - had it done so of course we'd be seeing an echo of what Cavill went through recently with the Superman role offered to someone else when he is still a contender. But even Dench's attempt to reassure Bond after his 'bitch is dead' comment - it fits with Cavill, as if she is trying to stop the young lad from getting the wrong idea. Craig plays it best he can but rather than seeming young, to me he seems a bit odd, a bit backward.
Re-reading my review when it came out, which is too long-winded to post here, the film brings out the nitpicker in me and I go to see the Bond movies to avoid all that. I can watch 10-15 mins of Die Another Day and enjoy it even if only to scoff but I don't scoff at this, I just don't like it much - something about it feels off. I don't think there is an action scene I enjoy in this.
The movie feels crammed, the story as written here would work better as a four-part mini series.
For some reason, ITV4 has stopped its Bond season, or put it on hold, probably due to the World Cup.
I know a lot of people are down on this one for various reasons, some of which I agree with. I've always kinda liked it and this viewing was probably the best that the film has ever played. Even broken up over two nights (my wife got a phone call on Thursday night from a friend that she had to take), the thing worked for us.
The good:
The film looks great. The production design is fantastic and well shot by cinematographer Roberto Schaefer. I take issue with some of the really tight framing in some shots but that's about it.
The acting is excellent across the board. Almost everyone is really intense with the exception of David Harbour's CIA agent, who provides some much needed levity in his brief scenes.
Bond gets to be smart here. I love him going to Austria and figuring stuff out at the Tosca opera sequence, for instance.
The styling of the film is the best of any of the Bond films. Bond's wardrobe is 10/10 great and well tailored. I want every single outfit that he wears in this film.
The action scenes are frequent and intense. I take issues with the editing on some of them (see below) but I think they work overall. The opening car chase is fantastic (fight me on this) and the one-on-one fight in Haiti is one of the best fights in the entire franchise. I also really like the airplane battle which is very well shot but neutered somewhat by the editing choices. I also like the climactic hotel battle quite a bit. it's one of the few climactic battles that doesn't go on for too long. Not all of them work, though.
The plot is actually pretty strong. The script itself is underdeveloped (see below) but the overall narrative throughline works. I know the film took a lot of crap for ultimately being about water, but that's a ridiculous complaint. If you want to rule the world, controlling all of the natural resources would absolutely be the way to do it. Look at what China has been doing in Africa over the last two decades and you'll see that Quantum's plan is actually spot on.
I think Mathieu Amalric is fantastic as Dominic Greene. He plays Greene differently based upon who he's with in the situation which is great to see. He's ultimately a bit of a sleaze underneath his cultured patina and it's fun to see that sleazy side come out. He's highly underrated in the Bond villain pantheon.
Olga Kurylenko is very good in her underwritten role. I think her character suffers the most in the script (again, see below) but she brings a lot to the table and makes her dramatic scenes work quite well with her overall demeanor and body language.
The not so good:
The script needed another go. While the structure is pretty sound, it feels pretty bare bones and a lot of characters really get the short end of the stick. Kurylenko's character is particularly hurt by the script as her character just feels thin. Gemma Arterton is also really given nothing to do here. I also think that Felix Leiter is kinda wasted in the film. It's great to have Geoffrey Wright back but I wish he'd been given more of an active role in the proceedings. We had the writer's strike here, though.
While the film 'looks' great, I take issue with a lot of the really tight framing of some of the shots, especially in the action scenes. A lot of great sets aren't fully utilized to their highest potential because there are no establishing shots to clarify what you're looking at.
The editing is too tight and often leads to confusing action scenes. I get what the director and editor were going for with the framing and the editing and sometimes it worked great (like in the opening car chase), but often this editing doesn't create excitement...it creates confusion. The worst scene, in my opinion, is the foot chase between Bond and Mitchell early on. They're both dressed similarly, and with the lighting, the framing, and the quick editing, it's nearly impossible to tell what exactly is going on or who you're watching at any given moment. There are some great locations at play in that scene, especially at the end, but the editing is confusing and there's very little sense of the geography of the sequence.
Not since TB had I looked forward to a Bond film with so much expectation. After the super CR this should have capitalised on that success and driven the rebooted series forward with unstoppable momentum. Instead, everything went wrong. We got a direct sequel when none was needed. OHMSS deserved a direct sequel, CR didn’t. We should have got a traditional mega-villain outlandish plot with a fabulous lair. What we got was an utter mess from start to finish. Script, direction, editing and music are all appalling. I only rewatched it under obligation of having to for this thread. In past viewings I sort of liked the opera sequence but this time even that was contrived and boring. And once again we have no Q and Moneypenny, but lots of M turning up everywhere and annoying the hell out of me.
Whereas OP was bad, at least we had Steven Berkoff to liven things up, but QOS makes GE look good, so that shows how much this one stinks.
Comments
There is an amazing bit of bad editing in the ski chase where the editor makes it look like Bond is watching his own stuntman. It’s kind of shockingly shoddy.
I notice nobody has taken the plunge to review DIE ANOTHER DAY, so I'll take one for the team...
Deep breath...
Oh, dear, Die Another Day. What to say?
I like all James Bond films. Even the ones I don’t like. Yet there is something depressingly amateurish about Die Another Day, something that makes me believe the filmmakers just ticked a series of boxes as they constructed this vast tribute movie and ended up making a pastiche of the actual thing. It just so silly, from the futuristic sci-fi plot elements to the dud special effects, and jam packed full of overplayed characters, whether it’s the Bond girl, the villain or the South African loud mouth at a gene replacement clinic. The time span is all over the place. So too the location hopping. M globe trots around the world as if she learnt nothing from The World Is Not Enough. Pierce Brosnan suddenly looks old and tired. The grey hairs don’t help.
The movie starts off with another huge set piece chase which just bores the pants off me. They could have cut the PTS short when Bond gets unmasked and is threatened with execution – Moon could have had him dragged to prison and continued his insane plot regardless; all they needed to do was bin the father-son relationship, rather like the team should later have binned the step-brother relationship for Bond and Blofeld in Spectre. All this family background doesn’t add up to anything for the audience. It is just script writers trying to be clever. What would be clever of Purvis and Wade is if their scripts developed any tension, any humour or any intrigue. This one just doesn’t. My lips flickered into a smile once or twice and that’s about it.
Action-wise, like the last effort, everything is overdone. The sabre fight is dull; there is too much running around to create any suspense and it happens so early there is never any peril for anyone. The fight with Mr Kil and a barrage of lasers was done better in Logan’s Run in 1976, which tells you something - and not just about the rudimentary special effects. I mean, if you are going to go all sci-fi on us, the least the crew can do is make the SFX decent (like they did for Moonraker); here they are just plain rotten. The car chases are appalling and appallingly long winded. The climax is stupefyingly slow. You’d think they’d drop in a few decent jokes but they don’t. Several scenes end without the expected depressurising pay off [that is not a joke about the finale, by the way, so obvioulsy ripped from Goldfinger you almost weep] so the audience instead of chuckling begins to think they should take proceedings seriously, when they really shouldn’t. Not with an episode this outrageous.
Sadly, mostly, the film is an agonisingly straight affair. The whole exercise becomes a wink-wink to a knowing audience than anything actually enjoyable. Most of the original stuff is schoolboy double entendres and drama so lame none of it would seem out of place in a Carry On movie. There are some decent scenes. The stuff at the Cuban cigar factory was excellent. So too the set-to with Gustav Graves in his Icelandic hot house [Cornwall’s Eden Project]. But basically the film is, well, rather basic and crude, in script and execution, despite the big money thrown at it.
So why do I like it? I like spotting all the nods to the previous movies. I rather like Madonna’s theme tune, which like Duran Duran’s doesn’t try to sound like a Bond tune at all. John Cleese makes a fine go of Q, reinforcing my opinion he should have had the gig from Goldeneye. I enjoy Rosamunde Pike as the icily named Miranda Frost. Emilio Echevarria is fine as the sleeper agent in Cuba.
That’s about it, I guess. Let’s move on. By the end, I feel that was the producers’ opinion too.
DAD is fun, and it moves much better than TWINE does, it at least has a sense of pace and energy to it, and it feel appropriately Bondy in most places. Pierce shows up some of his acting shortcomings, but he is still a very effective star and being a charismatic lead in a film this size is not a task just anyone could do, and he certainly can. And the story is a decent one: Bond's capture is something new and exciting, and finally Fleming's Moonraker gets an adaptation. But there is also a feeling of tackiness to the film: the dialogue is not classy like a Bond film should be, the music is rather thin, the sets (despite costing an absolute bomb I'm sure) look cheap and fake - all that blue plastic ice and dry ice, and the locations aren't massively lush: I think this is the only Bond film where the main cast don't appear in any of the overseas locations the film is set in. I don't begrudge a Bond film using UK locations, but when Korea looks exclusively like a forest in Hampshire or somewhere and a very obviously Cornish clifftop, then something's gone a bit wrong.
I would still rather watch it than TWINE as it is fun and it belts along like a cartoon, but Bond should feel like hokum wrapped in the most expensive and classy silk robe, and this feels like Bond by way of TK Maxx. It's the Batman & Robin of the series, and the producers wisely saw that a course correction was necessary.
Copy/paste from a year ago:
DIE ANOTHER DAY
This is trying to be MOONRAKER but without the finesse or tonal control.
The good:
The bad:
I prefer this to TWINE for the simple fact that this is rarely dull. Things move here.
While this thing made absolute bank at the box office, I'm glad that EON decided that they needed to get back to basics with the next one. While I love MOONRAKER, the franchise really needed FOR YOUR EYES ONLY as a follow-up to reset things. Similarly, we needed CASINO ROYALE after this one.
Current ranking on this rewatch:
I saw most of the pre-credits last night on telly, no more.
David Arnold's score is stirring but feels a bit beleaguered and stressy - sort of like Brosnan's Bond, I guess. It's not empowering, sexy, swaggering stuff. It seems a bit minor key always.
The trio emerge from the waves in close-up - always looks a bit odd, like they're a cartoon or against a phoney backdrop.
Brozzer looking a bit jowly. Have to disagree with @HarryCanyon about the actor playing Moon and Toby Stephens - the former seems a lot smaller and no way can I buy it's the same person, on repeat viewing there is no tic, no tell-tale giveaway in gesture of the kind we see in Face/Off that makes you think: 'A-ha! It's the same guy!'
Now, some of the dialogue here is clever but in the cinema I couldn't hear it too well. Why does Bond seek to antagonise when he is undercover; he can do that at Zorin's cocktail party I guess, or Carver's press do but it's not smart behind enemy lines. It could be done more subtly, Bond's observation of Moon's cool cars. The ensuing chase is marred because it seems Bond's hovercraft has had the drawbridge drop on it, or is blown up several times, then next shot you see, oh, that's Bond still so he wasn't killed. I don't know if this was delibarate but seeing your hero killed a few times in a minute does undermine the whole thing a bit.
Someone could figure out how much exposition dialogue each of the pre-credits has. Virtually none in FRWL, a bit more in GF and TB. Very little in OHMSS, Or in LALD, if you ignore the UN speech stuff which we are meant to do. AVTAK also has very little dialogue until the last 30 seconds. And what there is back then is more small-talk stuff. I did prefer all that but since then there seems to be a lot of chin-wagging in the pre-credits, too much 'Pay attention, 007!' for the audience.
The deliberately decolorised cinematography doesn't really appeal though I can see why they did it, the score isn't mixed properly, the back projection could be charming but isn't really, and Moon should get plenty of shots on Bond but keeps missing. I suppose this is a new variation on the pre-credits of OP and TND and not all bad in a way but it's another long-winded intro.
TND must be one of the talkiest pre-credits, in terms of ratio to action, but TWINE's was also pretty busy. Actually, QoS must have the least talky pre-credits ever! Marred by a lousy edit at the end as it segued into the awful song.
DAD was yet another Bond that was rewritten during filming so the dialogue is not very witty - it had to be of a 'first draft will this do' variety. I can watch chunks of it but mostly it blows chunks. It feels like a very self-satisfied film. Feels very American too, in that the London we see is kind of how American cinema portrays it, all stuffy old gents in a gentlemen's club, all a bit Mary Poppins.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Die Another Day (2002)
Back in 2002 the reviews weren’t suggesting that this was the worst Bond movie ever. They didn’t hammer every angle that could be found. They didn’t predict the end of the series unless things changed and smartish.
Having enjoyed TWINE very much I looked forward to more. The PTS wasn’t brilliant (strange lighting/colouring, average action) but at least it ended promisingly – Bond caught prisoner, what the hell was going on? The title song was dreck, the worst one yet (I didn’t know then that worse was to follow). However, being told after it that our man had been in captivity being tortured for 14 months was a big step in a new direction. The producers wanted to take Bond where he’d never been before, and not geographically. The fakeout where we think he’s going to be executed, the prisoner exchange, the whole business about him being suspected of leaking – this was different and had potential.
The Hong Kong hotel sequence was amusing and made a sensible enough link in the chain to send Bond on his way to Cadiz … sorry, Cuba … for the most hopeful part yet – the cigar factory/sleeper agent segment. Very Fleming, Raoul was the best local agent-type we’d had in years. It was shame he didn’t get more than two scenes, there was untapped potential there if the plot had developed differently.
Things started to go downhill from this point. The entire dialogue between Jinx and Bond when they meet was, as has been said, more suited to a Carry On movie. It doesn’t take much to picture Babs and Sid there. The beauty clinic action was more interesting, and the London scenes that follow had a definite sense of someone having read Fleming’s Moonraker, which can’t be bad. The MI6 characters all follow rapidly with the sense of someone checking the names off a list.
And then we get to Iceland and (I don’t know about in screen time, it’s just the way it feels to me) the second, lesser half of the movie. Toby Stephens wasn’t the worst Bond villain (Joe Don Baker still existed) but a weak one nonetheless – he’d do much better when he switched to playing Bond on radio.
The film continued to descend. I had been looking forward to the car chase but it was a let down, followed in short order by the ice parasurfing or whatever it was scene. Next came the Korean scenes and the cliched airplane fight(s) and the escape from the CGI plane. By this point I was disappointed but not to the extent others seem to have been. Still, this rewatch wasn't painful since I hadn't seen it in a while.
The music and Brosnan’s performance were both definite downsteps from TWINE but those were solvable. Many of the characters were, too, but again that was solvable. I didn’t expect what was to happen.
Does everyone like Raoul in this then? I'm a bit surprised, I always found him oddly charmless, like a really hollow, thin attempt to make another Kerim Bey.
I couldn't hear what he was saying in the cinema. Some of the dialogue 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' is not original, I know people can recite unoriginal lines in real life but the actor has to show something that indicates the character is doing that, if you see what I mean. I did like the stuff in the cigar factory, though it's barely a minute. The film doesn't lean towards people like that, it leans towards that Tarantino American guy.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The ice surfing scene is also barely a minute but it's severely criticised often. Very often.
As is often said in different contexts, size doesn't matter. The cigar factory scene is a good one and the ice surfing isn't.
Like I said above, the film could have done with more of the cigar factory/sleeper agent kind of material and as I implied less of the Iceland stuff.
DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)
Brosnan’s final turn and it seems like he’s growing into the role a little. He’s looking and acting like an adult instead of a cocky young man and he even delivers a pun with panache, “saved by the bell.” The PTS is terrific, full of action and exactly what is needed in a Bond opener. The titles are excellent again but unfortunately the song is awful, so Brosnan ends his tenure without a decent song amongst them.
DAD reminds me very much of DAF (and not just of some plot similarities). As with DAF the first half is excellent, the prisoner exchange, the meeting with M, his escape, the hotel scenes, the Cuba section, the fencing duel and Q (special praise for John Cleese here) introducing the gadgets are all well up to the mark. Unfortunately, as with DAF, the second half is boring old hat stuff we’ve all seen before and the CGI effects are appalling. The fact that Miranda Frost is a double agent was telegraphed from the beginning (MI6 got very lax in the Brosnan era).
I enjoyed the echoes of some of the novels working their way into the script. I didn’t enjoy M having such disdain for Bond throughout the four movies, it was a mistake by the producers to have Dench behave in this way just because she’s a woman and thinking that she had to be cold and cynical because of that to show authority. The Moneypenny virtual reality scene was dreadfully embarrassing.
Brosnan is by far the worst Bond to date, would his successor fare better?
OHMSS - TB - FRWL - LTK - GF - YOLT - DN - FYEO - TSWLM - LALD - TLD - DAF - TND - AVTAK - TMWTGG - MR - DAD - TWINE - OP - GE
My ranking so far:
Goldfinger
The Spy Who Loved Me
The Living Daylights
Octopussy
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Moonraker
Tomorrow Never Dies
You Only Live Twice
A View to a Kill
From Russia with Love
GoldenEye
For Your Eyes Only
Live and Let Die
Die Another Day
The World Is Not Enough
Thunderball
Licence to Kill
The Man with the Golden Gun
Never Say Never Again
Diamonds Are Forever
Casino Royale 67
Dr. No
Before going on to the Craig years, I'll say the action scenes in TWINE are the only ones of his era where I can generally go along with it, where they are largely believable. All Brosnan 's other films had action designed it seems to me to test your loyalty or fealty, as if to say, okay, are you prepared to go along with this? It's all nonsense really. I mean, I know steering a speedboat through a fish restaurant isn't that likely but generally I could go along with what I saw on screen.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
DAD is one of my least favourite Bond films. There, I said it. It's too much in several ways. Too "modern" editing makes it look dated now. Several of the gadgets are too sci-fi, especially the car. CGI is used too much, and too badly. Jinx speaks almost exclusively in double-entendres. The Madonna song simply isn't Bondian. There are some positives in there, such as the ice palace and Rosamund Pike. In fact I think the potential for a good film is there. The script had to be fixed with the worst excesses removed, the director and the editor should've been removed and replaced too.
This week it's Casino Royale and, well, it's awesome isn't it? They rethought what a Bond film can be, how Bond himself can be portrayed, and although it was kind of a shock to see it, it was shocking in the best possible way, because suddenly we had a Bond film which acted as a real film, if you kind of know what I mean. It had drama, real emotion, and actual shocks which really made you feel something. People were swept up in the story and engaged on a level a Bond film had never really done before; plus it still thrilled audiences in the way a Bond film should with several standout action sequences (the opening parkour chase being one of the best action scenes in any Bond), and it didn't forget the jokes too, although they obviously weren't on the level of silly we'd seen at some points before. And I think Kleinman produced one of the all-time best Bond title sequences too: every time I see it it just gets me more pumped to watch the whole film, yet again!
Daniel Craig is obviously a huge talking point of the film, and the only person to play 007 who received a Bafta nomination for playing the role, and it's easy to see why. He totally owns the film from the first minute onscreen and is one of the most compelling Bonds we've had. Bond was suddenly vulnerable and capable of getting things wrong, but although 007 onscreen had long ago become a kind of perfect, invincible hero, somehow changing this aspect didn't make him feel any less like Bond. He's got this way of making you able to read exactly what he's feeling without seemingly moving his face, which is pretty amazing, and also more convincing for a spy who wouldn't be telegraphing his emotions to everyone around with a raised eyebrow. It was perfectly judged: he brought his own cold, economical manner to playing Bond the blunt instrument, but importantly he didn't forget to bring the huge swagger and self-confidence that Connery introduced so his feels completely like James Bond 007. But when his armour is stripped and his heart broken, we really feel it too.
It's not perfect: I think the film is missing a bit of style- it's better than DAD on that front but could be bettered (and I think it was). The score is decent but Arnold still brings that slightly thin and basic feel for my money; and on the plot front there's some aspects which feel very hazy and undefined to me. I still don't entirely get how Vesper's betrayal works, how Le Chiffre can get the money (and like most Bonds it's just best not to think about the plot too much), and Mathis' betrayal feels very fudged, to the extent it's actually quite confusing whether he really is a baddie or not. It feels like they end the film without actually deciding that. Also for me, the final sinking house action scene feels like the makers lost confidence in what the film was doing and squeezed in more action where I think the audience actually just wanted to get to the Vesper plot because that was the more compelling bit. Plus, I'm still not 100% convinced by Eva Green: I don't think she's quite the best person for it and some of her line deliveries are quite odd. I kind of wish they hadn't used up Rosamund Pike on the previous film.
It's the 20th anniversary of its release this year and it's still as good as ever. Did they somehow produce the best film in the series, 21 movies in? I think there's certainly an argument for it. And did it also introduce the best Bond performer of the lot too? There's absolutely an argument for that as well.
Good viewpoint. Thanks for that.
I haven't watched CR yet and may not have the time this week, but what you write chimes very well with me. I remember how anti-Craig I was when he was announced and how sceptical I was going into the cinema. However, I was cheered in advance by the title and the return to Fleming and I honestly believe that is one of the reasons the movie works so well.
Like yourself I do have reservations. I dislike the sequence where Bond's heart stops, although the poisoning was a good angle, and I feel the fight with the Obanno and his henchman is a bit overly bloody for where it fits into the narrative. I don't dislike the collapsing pallazzo scene, but I think it is confusing and almost feels like an add-on. The book of course was simply a gentle slide to Vesper's betrayal and death. I think the writers wrote themselves into a corner here by having Bond suspect Mathis has deceived him - because he can't ever suspect it is Vesper, he loves her after all - it extends the coda unnecessarily, so they thought they needed a spectacular end. In fact, you could cut out quite a lot of Bond's recovery and just jump to the stuff in Venice.
As you say, Craig really nails it in this one, which kind of leaves him no where to go in the next four. Unlike you, I really get Eva Green and her portrayal of Vesper. Her exterior gets broken down by the experiences at CR and with OO7 and this comes across in descending stages.
It was good to have Fleming's final line. For us as cinema goers, it was great to have the final line we got, delivered with fresh vitality and urgency.
Overall, CR is right up there for me. Top 5 for sure.
Copy/paste from last year:
CASINO ROYALE
I tried to be objective about this one and see it fresh, divorced from any of my pre-existing positive opinions from prior viewing experiences. I really tried. Flaws and all, this really is one of the very best entries in the entire franchise.
The good:
The not so good:
That's really about it for complaints. It's definitely in the conversation for 'best' film in the franchise. At this moment and with this franchise rewatch, I'm pretty comfortable putting it in 3rd place (so far) but honestly, it could be in the #1 spot. The top 4 are all about equal.
Current ranking on this rewatch:
It was good to have Fleming's final line. For us as cinema goers, it was great to have the final line we got, delivered with fresh vitality and urgency.
Yeah, i think adapting the novel properly, having Bond at the end on his own and betrayed, with the 'bitch is dead' line, and yet still managing to find a way to make the audience leave the cinema with a spring in their step and on a high is kind of one of the most amazing tricks this film pulls off!
CASINO ROYALE (2006)
The series rebooted in this one and Daniel Craig was chosen as the new Bond. I’d seen him ten years earlier in the fabulous television series Our Friends In The North and if you had told me then that he would have been playing James Bond I would have laughed out loud because he doesn’t look like a Bond, though his acting skills were all there to be seen and admired.
James Bond earns his 00 status in a black and white PTS, and very atmospheric it is, with fight scenes of the like not seen since the days of OHMSS. The titles are superb and the song is excellent, one of the very best. Arnold’s score is very good, the best since TSWLM. The writers adapt the novel very well, keeping the core basis and adding good action scenes and also changing the central gambling game from the boring game of chance baccarat to the skilled game of Texas Hold’em poker. Although there are some moves that are not etiquette and/or allowed, and the final hand wouldn’t play out like that by skilled players, it works cinematically so can be easily overlooked.
I find CR to be like OHMSS (the best of the canon) in lots of ways. Both films:
…serve as the entry point to a new actor as Bond
…are closer to the source novels than any of the others
…have Bond fall in love only to have her die at the end
… see him intend to resign from MI6
…follow outlandish entries
…have Bond become vulnerable
…at the time they were the two longest movies
The are down points to CR - it does actually go on too long, they could have lost the sinking house scene and just had Vesper committing suicide as in the book, it would have been a much stronger ending. Also, Judi Dench is back as M. It’s confusing to have an actor playing the same role in a reboot, and she’s excactly the same as in the Brosnan era (well of course she is as she gives the same performance in every film she makes), and no Q and Moneypenny. But all in all it’s a very, very good entry.
Bond was certainly back in action, they couldn’t mess it up in the next one, could they?
So, where to rank it? I prefer the more serious movies but it doesn’t quite have the rewatchabilty factor of some of the others. It does hold a sentimental place for me in my heart as it was the last Bond movie I saw with my father in the cinema before he passed away and he introduced me to Bond in 1962 with DN when I was just 6 years old. Taking everything into account it goes in at #4.
OHMSS - TB - FRWL - CR - LTK - GF - YOLT - DN - FYEO - TSWLM - LALD - TLD - DAF - TND - AVTAK - TMWTGG - MR - DAD - TWINE - OP - GE
I think CR isn't "just" a great Bond movie, it's a great movie in general. There are very few things that could've been improved upon. I feel the line: "The b*tch is dead" could've had more impact: I don't know what was needed to give it more punch. Maybe a change in the script or a different line reading, probably both. But this is nitpicking. CR is probably the best Bond film yet.
I love the 'bitch is dead' line, because we know straight away that Bond doesn't really mean it, and he's got his armour back on. I'd say it's perfectly delivered.
This you?
What's interesting about digging into the Casino Royale archive is just how many members were posting back then, now we are a dwindling number...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Having read the novel countless times I was thrilled to find more Fleming on the screen since 1981 and FYEO. I thought they would never film the torture scene, and was proved wrong. And fanboy that I am I was very happy to see "Based On The Novel By Ian Fleming" in the credits for the first time since the 1960s. (Turns out for the last time, too, to date anyway.)
My late father enjoyed it, though he made the comment that "It’s a good film, but the hero's name didn't have to be James Bond". I could see what he meant. Just a few tweaks and the hero could be any of a dozen other cinematic spies, eg no Moneypenny or Q. That impression was aided by the unfamiliar actor in the lead role.
David Arnold's score was terrific, with "City of Lovers" nearly matching Barry at his best.
I can never make up my mind whether it's the best Bond film of this century (so far) or SF is. I'd probably prefer this because of the Fleming content, but after a viewing of SF (and one is coming soon) I have been known to change my mind.
This brings back memories. Thanks!
Oh absolutely. Craig delivers that line like he's trying to convince himself of its veracity.
I didn't like Casino Royale at the time and I don't like it now. I'm afraid I'm all a bit 'green eggs and ham' about it.
It was supposed to be a reboot in the manner of Jason Bourne - but I like The Bourne Identity and I don't like this. The first Bourne film felt more like a Bond film than this, it awoke the same emotions, the same thrills. I had Doug Liman down as a potential Bond director after seeing Go but he went this way instead. Jason isn't a happy chap, I mean he has reason not to be but he still seems happier than Craig's Bond. Admittedly it's the thing I commented on reading Slow Horses or even watching Tuner - inept or out of sorts leads who, we find, have a sudden hidden talent or superhero ability. At no point in CR do I really feel like cheering Craig's Bond on, I don't find him too relatable.
Admittedly, the Bourne series doesn't have legs - it went to roughly four or five movies but then you can say the same about Craig's tenure. For you see, once you have your first film as a sort of origins or coming-of-age story, it is hard to do sequels because it feels like that story has been told and done and dusted. The narrative centre of gravity is skewed for future instalments. You even got this with Brosnan's GoldenEye, also by Campbell, of course - all this 'sexist misogynistic dinosaur' stuff and folk popping up to have a go at him, along with the Cold War theme, it just feels like by time the film is over, so is Bond as well. I love Superman: The Movie but while its sequel isn't so bad it just feels a bit off, because the first film is an origins story and the second feels like its going through the motions; all the other movies feel like add-ons.
This is something the Amazon team really need to think about, because an origins story pretty much writes itself but makes everything harder for everyone else following on. The story is done.
Craig I liked in Layer Cake but again, that feels more like a Bond movie than this does. The scenes and villainy are more outlandish. The look of the film I prefer. As with Bourne, I could quite happily sit down and watch some of it for an hour on telly if it came on.
And I liked Eva Green in that movie about the 1968 Paris riots which is never really shown on telly now. I don't really love her in this but everyone else does so I guess that's just me. It's the way she and Bond guess each other's backgrounds because it's in the script - but he doesn't pick up on her French accent or anything.
Things about it feel off, because much of it seems written for Henry Cavill - yet another example it seems to me of the producers ballsing things up, because script doctor Paul Haggis was talking about how it was going to be Cavill in the role but a month or so before Craig was announced. So we have the 'I knew it was too soon to promote you' line, or Bond being mistaken for a car valet, or his holding still, almost nervous, as he asks out hottie Solange, or his thrill at trying on a tux for the first time... all this seems written for a young Cavill, not Craig. I'm not arguing to say the role should have gone to Cavill - had it done so of course we'd be seeing an echo of what Cavill went through recently with the Superman role offered to someone else when he is still a contender. But even Dench's attempt to reassure Bond after his 'bitch is dead' comment - it fits with Cavill, as if she is trying to stop the young lad from getting the wrong idea. Craig plays it best he can but rather than seeming young, to me he seems a bit odd, a bit backward.
Re-reading my review when it came out, which is too long-winded to post here, the film brings out the nitpicker in me and I go to see the Bond movies to avoid all that. I can watch 10-15 mins of Die Another Day and enjoy it even if only to scoff but I don't scoff at this, I just don't like it much - something about it feels off. I don't think there is an action scene I enjoy in this.
The movie feels crammed, the story as written here would work better as a four-part mini series.
For some reason, ITV4 has stopped its Bond season, or put it on hold, probably due to the World Cup.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
We not doing this any longer?
We are! In my case I'm just trying to summon up the willpower to watch QoS. Don't know about anyone else.
So I watched.
The gunbarrel still isn't at the proper place, or tempo.
The title song remains awful.
It hasn't somehow acquired a decent villain or henchman.
Or plot.
The editing is still dreadful, so bad that I genuinely thought M had been shot during Mr White's escape.
The score is still the weakest of David Arnold's time as composer. So, still better than any that followed.
Copy/paste from last year, with some minor edits:
QUANTUM OF SOLACE
I know a lot of people are down on this one for various reasons, some of which I agree with. I've always kinda liked it and this viewing was probably the best that the film has ever played. Even broken up over two nights (my wife got a phone call on Thursday night from a friend that she had to take), the thing worked for us.
The good:
The not so good:
It's an over-hated entry in the franchise.
QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008)
Not since TB had I looked forward to a Bond film with so much expectation. After the super CR this should have capitalised on that success and driven the rebooted series forward with unstoppable momentum. Instead, everything went wrong. We got a direct sequel when none was needed. OHMSS deserved a direct sequel, CR didn’t. We should have got a traditional mega-villain outlandish plot with a fabulous lair. What we got was an utter mess from start to finish. Script, direction, editing and music are all appalling. I only rewatched it under obligation of having to for this thread. In past viewings I sort of liked the opera sequence but this time even that was contrived and boring. And once again we have no Q and Moneypenny, but lots of M turning up everywhere and annoying the hell out of me.
Whereas OP was bad, at least we had Steven Berkoff to liven things up, but QOS makes GE look good, so that shows how much this one stinks.
OHMSS - TB - FRWL - CR - LTK - GF - YOLT - DN - FYEO - TSWLM - LALD - TLD - DAF - TND - AVTAK - TMWTGG - MR - DAD - TWINE - OP - GE - QOS