Flak Magazine: Review of Casino Royale, 11-29-06

Die Another Day, released to mark the 40th anniversary of the James Bond movie franchise, contained many references to the previous 19 films. The film also made a significant break with tradition — for the first time, the opening sequence ended badly for Bond. For the first time, he didn't get away with it.

Subjected to a long period of captivity and torture, 007 emerged to find that he was no longer required by MI6. Indeed, M made it very clear to him that "the world changed" while he was away. Indeed it had. Die Another Day was the first Bond film to emerge since Sept. 11. The imprisonment of 007 was significant in this context — a terrorist plot of that magnitude looked disturbingly like the sort of scheme that a Bond villain would hatch, and therefore, just the sort of plan that 007 would foil. Bond's absence, like that of Superman, needed explanation. When he did emerge, Bond's release came not by his own hand, but through a backstairs negotiation on his behalf. Although he eventually killed the bad guy and got the girl, Bond was somehow different. Yes, the world had changed, but so had he. He was fallible and occasionally vulnerable. He was like the rest of us in a way that he never had been before.

Created during the first flush of the Cold War, James Bond was a new type of hero, fit for a new kind of war. As the noise and the terror of the Second World War subsided into a more quietly sinister conflict, espionage became ever more necessary. James Bond had left the Navy for MI6, the British Secret Service. In the franchise's first movie, Dr. No, Sean Connery played a lean, efficient spy, prepared to use violence to achieve his aims. He killed not for spectacle, or for his own satisfaction, but in the (literal) execution of his duty. Connery provided a muscular, physical presence, entirely in keeping with the gentleman thug of Fleming's novels. The Cuban Missile Crisis took place around the time of Dr. No's release, and Bond reflected these times: Because the threat was real, our heroes need to be real too.

As the Cold War continued, the British austerity of the early 1960s soon gave way to more optimistic and affluent times. The war generation, of whom Bond's character was a part, began to give way to the younger baby-boomer generation. The movies became bigger, more expensive and, frankly, more preposterous. Jet-packs, volcano lairs and creepy Oedipal villains became staples of the franchise. Bond had become as much a fixture of movie mythology as he was of the Cold War. When Roger Moore took over the role, in 1973's Live and Let Die, he was immediately aware of the character's inherent absurdity and played him for laughs while the sets and plots got even more outlandish. In a decade of recession and global oil crisis, Bond could help not by saving the day, but by providing genuine escapism.

In 1987, the Bond mantle passed to Shakespearean actor Timothy Dalton, a heavyweight choice for the role. Discarding the camp humor of his predecessor, Dalton's Bond was ruthless, cold and efficient. The world around him was changing. Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR meant that the end was in sight for the Cold War. James Bond was starting to look like a leftover. Significantly, the final Bond film of the 1980s, Licence to Kill, placed Dalton's Bond outside MI6, carrying out an entirely personal vendetta. As the 1990s went on and popular culture became increasingly entrenched in irony, Bond was looking more and more like an anachronism.

When he did return six years later, much had changed, starting with the casting of Pierce Brosnan. 007's new boss was a woman, and she made it very clear where he now stood. He was a misogynist dinosaur, and a relic of the cold war. The villains? They too were relics. Disgruntled former secret agents lost, like Bond, in a world where the war was no longer big enough for them. Bond spent the next few years looking for the glories of the past. GoldenEye began its story in the USSR of the Cold War; its villain, like those from Tomorrow Never Dies and Die Another Day, is a figure from Bond's own past.

And so we come to Casino Royale, the first Bond movie to enter production since Sept. 11, based on the first of Ian Fleming's Bond novels and the only one not to have been incorporated into the franchise. World events are even bigger than those dreamed up by the most imaginative screenwriter. With 24-hour news stations and the Internet, the eyes of the world are pressed closer than ever to the window, and volcanic lairs and space weapons will not cut it — the audience is close enough now to see the cracks. While the Cold War remained chilly enough for 007's action to remain just the far side of fantasy, the 21st Century has seen the West being given a bloody nose, and that is just what we give to James Bond in Casino Royale. Not only do we see him bleed, but we see him sweat, tremble and, at one point, nearly cry.

Intended to restart the franchise by telling the story of Bond's first mission, we see an agent whose cool exterior is not quite in place yet. Bond makes several mistakes which would have shamed his "earlier" incarnations. He draws far too much attention to himself, and allows his target to get the upper hand several times before falling disastrously in love — this would not have happened to Connery. More Jack Bauer than Austin Powers, Daniel Craig plays James Bond as a spy for our interesting times. With images of real torture beamed nightly into our living rooms, we are a long way from the elaborate castration-by-laser of Goldfinger. Casino Royale's villain, the terrorist financier Le Chiffre, tries to break Bond with no more that a length of knotted cord — he has no time for overly complicated torture devices, as befits our era of both box cutters and black sacks. This is James Bond in our age of improvised war.

Bond's mission in Casino Royale is conducted with all the urgency that the modern world demands. When Roald Dahl accepted Bond franchise-keeper Cubby Broccoli's commission to write the script for You Only Live Twice, the writer was keen to have the producer's best advice. Broccoli's response was plain: "Two girls. Bond has them both." This does and doesn't happen in Casino Royale. He seduces the wife of one of his targets, but leaves her, still dressed, as soon has he has the information he needs from her. Even at the end of the movie, the point at which Bond is usually seen to be celebrating the completion of a successful assignment, locked in a clinch with his girl, our new Bond is still on the job at hand — no girl, nothing left but his mission.

Bond ends Casino Royale by uttering his most iconic line: "The name's Bond, James Bond." It is fitting that he waits until the end to introduce himself. 007 has come full circle. Yes, the world has changed, but in a way that only makes Fleming's original conception of him more relevant. The real James Bond is back.

— Michael Noble (michaeljohnnoble@googlemail.com)