movies: casino royale

casino royaleDANIEL CRAIG IS SEX!!!

*ahem*... now that that's out of the way, I can possibly construct a coherent sentence about Casino Royale...

I love the Bond movies (well, all except the ones with Timothy Dalton in them... urgh), and I was hopeful that Casino Royale wasn't going to end up as a total dog's breakfast... which seems to happen occasionally when they change Bonds... and I wasn't particularly heartened when J told me he had totally hated it...

And I have to say, the pre-credit teaser and the title sequence... not winning me over a whole lot. But then, I happen to think that the title sequence for Die Another Day was the best one ever... so this one had a lot to live up to. It was pretty... all graphicy and fairly stylish... but that's about all I can really say about it. Plus, I can't say I was loving the title song... especially since the lyrics were pretty much indistinguishable.

But then the movie ramped up with the whole parkour sequence, which, honestly, was just amazing...

Then it seemed to go barrelling along without us being visited by the Exposition Fairy... or the Plot Fairy for that matter... so, for a little while there, I actually had no idea what the hell the plot was supposed to be about... or what the villain's grand master plan was... or why James was doing whatever it was James was doing...

Luckily Judi Dench (all hail Dame J) showed up to explain the plot... even if it was about twenty minutes too late... and then, not two seconds after the point when I was thinking "and where the hell is the spunky and opinionated Bond Girl?"... Eva Green appeared... and while she's not Halle Berry... I was still reasonably impressed... and slightly distracted by her jewellery more than once, which was a little unfortunate at times...

Then there was lots of poker (and thankfully I'm more than passingly familiar with poker, or else I would have been totally lost for a while there) and lots of Bond being very Bond-eske...

But, I have to say... the Bond villain... Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre... SO VERY BEIGE! Dull, dull, dull, dull, dull! No menace, no megalomania, no delusions of grandeur... nothing! Just the wonky eye and the ability to play poker... very disappointing... and he didn't even have any psychotic and interesting henchmen...

Meanwhile Daniel Craig was just STUNNING each and every time he turned up on the screen (which luckily was pretty much the whole movie)... with those GORGEOUS ice blue eyes... and THAT swimsuit... but even just fully dressed in a tux (not to mention in the shower in his white tux shirt getting all wet and see-thru... *swoon*)... YUM with a capital EVERYTHING!

Then of course there's the whole "naked and tied to a chair" thing... which is now what I officially want for Christmas... Daniel Craig, naked and tied to a chair...

Just after the whole chair scene, the movie took a particular turn and I wasn't sure I liked it any more... it just seemed a very un-Bond way to resolve things...

But then I realised what was going on and I was okay with it again...

And the use of the James Bond theme music ONLY at the very end of the movie, when you see him finally transformed into the James we know and love... the perfect touch...

So, the final verdict, although I was cold/hot/cold/hot/cold/hot over the course of the movie, I did actually quite enjoy it.

yani's rating: 3 Vesper martinis out of 5

4 comments:

Larry said...

I'm one of the rare people that actually liked Timothy Dalton as Bond. You can beat me up at recess if you'd like :)

Anyway, I can see each and every point you made, and I'm a little surprised you didn't point out the fact that it was a very long movie.

Mads was very lackluster, especially given that the last villian was an exo-suit toting madman with a solar deathray satelite, but you have to admit Casino Royale was not the kind of movie that required a super-villian. In fact, in my opinion they did a good job of making an "old school" Bond flick that made use of suspense and "simple" action, as opposed to an over the top movie, like Die Another Day.

And yes, Daniel Craig is hot :)

Sunshine said...

No matter how hard I try, I just can't make myself sit through a whole James Bond movie. I just can't. What's wrong with me??!!!!! :P

Oh, can I be the tool here and say I don't think Daniel Craig is hot?? Well, too late, I've already said it. ;)

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen the Bond movie yet, but I keep picturing Daniel Craig in the nude scene in Tomb Raider where if you skip one frame at a time you "might" be able to see everything ...

I know, I'm pathetic, but I just have sex on the brain after drooling over the Broncos who were at my gym today *tounge lolling on the floor*

Anonymous said...

I loved it! 11 piercing blue eyes out of 10!