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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Author
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Topic: Casino Royale 2006
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-19-2006 01:15 PM
Location: Carmike 8, Lawton, OK
Auditorium: #4 THX
Format: Christie DLP, 2048 X 858 pixels (JPEG 2000), LPCM 5.1 audio
Best James Bond movie ever? Hmm...no. I don't agree with Mike Schindler on that.
However, I will say Casino Royale is the best James Bond movie release in nearly 30 years. And it's by far the best action movie I've seen all year.
The Spy Who Loved Me was released in 1977, and was the best of Roger Moore's efforts in playing Bond. Great movie, interesting characters -particularly villains, "his name is Jaws, he kills people." Goldfinger and From Russia With Love will probably always be the ground-breaking titans of the Bond franchise.
Having been increasingly disappointed with the past few Bond movies I went in with somewhat low expectations. Casino Royale director Martin Campbell also directed Goldeneye, the only one of the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies I liked at all. Casino Royale is a lot better.
This movie works because the filmmakers made at least a decent effort of being faithful to Ian Flemming's first Bond novel. This show is a little more grounded in realism and does away with many of the campy conventions in many previous Bond movies. Calling this the "Batman Begins of Bond movies" is a fair description.
Daniel Craig put in a very good performance in this re-imagining of James Bond. The Bond role will always be most identified with Sean Connery, but Craig revives the Connery tradition in a way and brings a lot of new things to the role. Daniel Craig may be the most talented actor to ever assume the Bond role. His version of James Bond is a ferocious ass kicker (like Connery), but also humanized at the same time. He watches cost and loss come from his actions and mistakes. You sense his anger and regret burning underneath. He gets hurt in fights to the death. He has to change his blood-soaked tuxedo and wash the blood out of cuts to his face and scalp. Bond regains his composure by chugging a glass of whiskey. When Daniel Craig does this you get the sense his Bond character has been through this kind of hell many times before. He's all business when he beats someone up or kills him and doesn't have a smirky one-liner to deliver when the deed is done. He's part sadist and masochist, but that comes with the territory of his dangerous job.
My only complaints with Casino Royale are somewhat minor. The movie runs about 15 to 20 minutes too long. That R&R sequence near the film's end could have been trimmed a great deal to improve the pace. The Sony VAIO product placements are too obvious. And then there's the card game itself. In Flemming's novel, Baccarat is played. The movie changes it to high stakes poker, Texas Hold 'Em style. I imagine the filmmakers made that change since Texas Hold 'Em is an easier game for audiences to follow -and is currently enjoying a huge fad.
Projection
Like David Stambaugh, I saw this in "D-Cinema." The theater where I viewed the movie doesn't have any silver screens (yet). The image brightness was very good, flicker free and completely even from corner to corner. Image sharpness was decent, but I did notice the pixel grid faintly on a tracking shot in the movie's black and white beginning. The movie was shot in Super35 and then put through a digital intermediate step by Framestore CFC. I couldn't find whether the lab did a 4K version or simply stayed with the 2K standard.
Audio
Pretty good, but seemed a bit hot and trebly -a lot like the mix for Goldeneye. The show is mixed pretty loud, but didn't seem very aggressive with the surrounds. There's a couple good car-by effects and some other stuff.
Opening Title Sequence
I loved it. This is a title sequence that actually feels relevant to the movie. It runs wild with the graphics of a card deck, turning its symbols into lethal weapons. I love sexy silhouettes of naked ladies holding guns and frolicking around as much as anyone. But that shtick was getting really old and damned goofy like a dance routine from a bad 70's variety show. Now we have rotoscoped silhouettes of men fighting, dying and falling to their doom to be shattered into diamonds, hearts, clubs or spades. The look is all very retro and new at the same time. It looked like a team of designers had a lot of fun with Illustrator, After Effects and a high end Discreet/Autodesk Inferno system.
The song, You Know My Name, performed by Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave) is decent, but isn't in the same class as Goldfinger, Carly Simon's Nobody Does It Better or McCartney's Live and Let Die. The song may gain a good amount of popularity for being the background on those great opening titles.
I really want to see this movie again. 3.75 stars out of 4. And if I had to round up or down, I'd just say 4 stars out of 4. Great show.
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Jason Winn
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 131
From: Mesquite, TX, USA
Registered: Jan 2006
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posted 11-20-2006 10:17 AM
I am a huge Bond fan, and I have to say Casino Royale is one of the best Bond movies ever! It ranks right up there with From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and The Spy who Loved Me. It was definitely a lot better than that crapfest, Die Another Day. This is what a Bond movie should be. No silly gadgets, no cheesy one-liners, no rediculous cartoonish villains, and no crappy CGI effects. This movie was more realistic, darker, and grittier. At first, I was a little skeptical about Daniel Craig as Bond, but he delivered an amazing performance.
I loved the opening black and white sequence where Bond kills his first two victims. That set the tone for the rest of the movie. Then, the main title sequence was amazing! It had a retro look to it. It reminded me of the 1960s Bond movies. Of course, the action scenes were some of the best of any Bond movie. The chase scene through the construction site had me on the edge of my seat.
I loved this movie. I can't wait to see it again. Just like Goldeneye revitalized the Bond franchise for the 1990s, Casino Royale revitalized the Bond franchise for the 21st century! If this is the new direction the Bond series is going in, I can't wait for the next one!
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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"
Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 11-21-2006 02:58 AM
I dug it moderately. Not nearly as much as many others seemed to do, but then I am not really into the whole Bond thing anyway. But I appreciated that they did indeed take this "back to the roots" approach.
I found Craig very good, but maybe just a little colorless. The character is supposed to be somewhat elusive, we don't know much about him except that he comes from a rough, non-upper class background and has made it to where he is just by sheer determination and scrupulousness. Craig brings this across very well, though. His Bond is not just a dressman.
SPOILERS
I liked that he screwed up a little bit here and there and almost died from the poison.
But I also thought that the movie didn't have a good rhythm somewhow. There were some parts which sagged somewhat, and then suddenly there was a lot of frenetic action for a long time.
I would also have liked it if they had had the opening classic view through the gun barrel (yes, that round thing with the spirals is a rifled gun barrel pointing at him). They did build that in into the end of the pre-story, though, OK.
I would actually have liked at least a few gadgets, not an invisible car or nonsense like that, but some nice high tech toys. Well, at least he had the defibrillator, and that came in handy... Where was Q? Is he not in the original novel(s)?
There is one glaring mistake in the movie though: in the Bahamas, Bond drives a Ford. Come on, Bond has more taste than that...
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