Adam Wilcox; tea drinking Brit with fondness for the media and tech.
Attention: This is old content. The archives are a snapshot of content created from 2004-2009. New stuff, visit log.adamwilcox.org.

adamwilcox.org

Casino Royale 05 January 2007

Ever the speedy to get into the cinema, I finally got round to watching the new James Bond film Casino Royale yesterday. This is the best Bond film. End of argument.

I was rather sad to see Pierce Brosnan go, the first Bond film I saw was GoldenEye, so for me Brosnan was Bond. However, it was clear from the last film that they were struggling with the franchise, the invisible Aston Martin V12 Vanquish was utterly crap.

Anyway, after various nitwits complained that Daniel Craig was not going to pull off the Bond role, he proved them wrong with a stunning good performance in a film that sets up a precedent for some fine big-screen adaptations for Ian Fleming’s gritty novels. Gone are the cheesy one liners, the gadgets, and the feeling that your watching a pantomime with explosions. This is a new Bond where you actually feel he might die. He bruises, he gets tortured, and he has to change this shirt from all the bleeding taking place. Daniel Craig is the closest to Flemings’ James Bond for many years; Bond was never a comedian. I’ll be interested to see if they remake From Russia With Love, because from my memory of the book- it’s even more violent than Casino Royale.

My girlfriend had never seen a Bond film, and I was slightly concerned that her first shamble into the world of 007 would be the new, “bloody, bruised, and tortured”. Rather surprisingly she loved it, thought Daniel Craig was rather delicious, and didn’t find the card game boring. Likewise I loved it, relieved that some sanity and reality has returned to Flemings’ character and I hope that this standard continues.

As a final note, when we went to the cinema, the girl behind the counter asked if I “was an adult”. I occasionally get asked this when I go to the pub, and being 21 I grudgingly accept this as part of the penalty of being ravishing handsome and devilishly good-looking, if a little young. However, Casino Royale is a 12A. So she wasn’t asking if I was 18… she was asking if I was over 12! I was not impressed, although I’m not allowed to do one of my tirade of rudeness anymore. I refer to those that got me frisked and testically fondled by a man called Jesus. In summary, the new James Bond is awesome, but I need to get my hair cut.