Casino Bland

I've had an opportunity, over the last week or so, to catch up on a couple of movies that I missed during cinema release.

Without doubt, the most disappointing of these was Casino Royale, the James Bond flick starring new Bond, Daniel Craig.

Disappointing? Yeah. That's the right word.

It was very different to Bonds of old. More gritty, more realistic, though referring to the concept of "realism" when talking about a Bond movie ought to tell you everything you need to know.

The first thing you'll notice is that it doesn't start with the trademark Bond theme. What good is a Bond movie without that music? It sets the tone and the anticipation... I don't know... perhaps they didn't want to set the audience up for disappointment. (They do use it over the end credits, but that's too late.)

Daniel Craig as Bond is far too flawed. He's moody, ponderous and fallible. Yes, he's got a finely chiseled body, but he introduces us to a weaker, more vulnerable Bond. Ian Flemming will be spinning so hard in his grave that it's effecting the earth's orbit around the sun.

Of course, Craig's just an actor who's controlled by a script writer and a director, neither of whom seemed to understand what or who Bond is supposed to represent. There was no humour. No witty one liners, no improbable near superhuman heroics, just a the grinding tedium of the chase, followed by the even greater tedium of No Limit Hold'em.

The one thing that sets Bond apart from, say, Bourne, is the inevitable audience groan as our hero achieves the impossible. In Casino Royale, that was missing.

And it's impossible to watch a Bond movie and not imagine how the "other" Bonds might have done it. Connery would have been way cooler, and way more talkative at the table. Moore would have been far less athletic, but somehow more on top of who was who in the zoo. And Brosnan... I know he'd have found some drop sheet and sticks to whip up an improvised parachute to get down from that building.

It's summed up towards the end of the movie when a bartender asks Bond if he'd like his martini shaken or stirred and Bond replies "do I look like I give a damn?" Of course you do James, "shaken, not stirred" is your trademark.

I read somewhere that Director Martin Campbell wanted to give the franchise a makeover, bringing it into the 21st century. In doing so, he lost the cartoonish larger-than-life atmosphere that's made Bond Bond. If this had been the first James Bond movie, I actually doubt whether there'd have been any more.

Casino Royale was just bland. Very disappointing.