2006 - Casino Royale

Alternate Title - James Bond In The World Series Of Poker. With Special Guest: Parkour.

PG13 - 144 minutes

Director - Martin Campbell

Stars - Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright

Review written: 10.8.2015

Casino Royale is the only Bond movie I’ve ever seen in theater to date. It has been over 2 years since I’ve written a Bond review. Because of the written Bond reviews, I switched into doing podcasts movie reviews so sorry for the delay. Specre opened this week and I wanted to go see it in theaters so I figured I’d get caught up considering I haven’t seen Casino Royale in years, had only seen Quantum Of Solace once and hadn't seen Skyfall yet.

This one starts out by pretending to be classy, Columbia Pictures logo is in black and white and so is the opening scene of the movie. Bond has a gun on some dude and it sounds like it’s Bond’s first rodeo. Bond describes how he killed the contact and it’s man-on-man action in a bathroom. Sexy. Then Bond shoots the dude after they complete each other sentences. Adorable. Then it cuts back to Bond shooting the first dude and it’s the Bond shooting at the camera thingy.
Cue the theme song by Audioslave. Awesome song. Even better opening credit sequence with cutout shadows and poker cards everywhere.
Mbale, Uganda - a pinball dictator wants guns from one eye dude Le Chiffre.
After being teamed with the most obvious agents of all time, Bond gets into a parkour chase with an apparent mutant. Is this the Bond Vs. X-Men crossover that people have been demanding for decades? Looking back, this movie has everything 2006 was completely about, parkour and Texas Hold ‘Em Poker. Bond has amazing knowledge of how construction equipment works, I feel like it would have to be easier if he just let the dude climb up really high and just waited for him on ground level. Maybe just tossed rocks at him until he finally came down. Bond’s stunt double’s hair is clearly 3 inches longer than that of Daniel Craig. Bond finds ELLIPSIS in a Nokia phone that is hilariously out of date already. Bond movies always start with a mission that isn’t explained but is somehow tied to the rest of the movie.
Le Chiffre cries blood like a bitch. He is also impossibly good at math.
Dame Judi Dench is M and she’s super pissed that Bond killed the bomb making mutant at the embassy in the beginning. (After writing this, I went back and looked. Completely forgot that Dench was M in all the Pierce Brosnan movies. It really has been a while since I’ve seen them.)
Nassau, Bahamas - Every entrance Bond does in this movie is straight out of one of his Heineken commercials. Obviously the commercials are spoofing the movies but watching him enter frame makes me thirsty and angry that I’m sober. After embassy, Bond has a phobia of cameras, almost OCD about them. Bond parks a car after being mistaken for a valet. Crashes a Land Rover into a Jaguar just so he can get into he building. Not worth it.
Has to be something very poignant about three black kids chasing after a white lady on a white horse to her mansion. Once she got off the horse I realized she was hispanic. The meaning behind the scene is a little more muddy now. Hey! It’s that super sexy scene where Daniel Craig walks out of the water in tiny underwear. And you try to pretend that he’s not like 52 here.
Bond loves terrorizing M because he hacked into her account to look up info on Dimitrios. When she is contacted, M is in bed with some hairy, fat dude. Probably not a prostitute. Probably her husband. But I must confess, I love the idea of M cruising the local bar scene in an attempt to pick up some bear strange. At any rate: Bond plays a random game against Dimitrios and wins his Jaguar. He then takes the car for a stroll with Dimitrios’ woman, Solange, the girl that rode the horse earlier. Cut immediately to her riding Bond’s white horse as well. Dimitrios works with Le Chiffre, didn’t see that coming.
Suddenly we are in Miami despite not seeing a plane or boat trip. I know they’re close but they do require some travel considering they are separated by the fucking ocean. While at a dead body exhibit, Bond follows Dimitrios and is immediately caught. For being the worst best spy he sure gets caught all the goddamn time. Doesn’t matter because he stabs Dimitrios in the stomach and stars over by following Ellipsis instead. Bond is such a failure, the new guy also knows he’s being followed by Bond. Bond is such an amateur. It’s amazing that he lives long enough to get involved in the other adventures, assuming this is a prequel to the rest. At this point I’m fairly certain that’s what the message of the opening scene was. Anyway, the second dude wants to blow up a plane at the Miami Airport. Bond is chasing the dude and by the time they reach the plane they are both insanely sweaty which personally, I found amazing because Miami is a humid hell that will drain you of all fluids. I lived there for a whole two months and found it miserable. The city could use a plane blowing up, it would get their mind off of the goddamn humidity. Bond saves the plane and blows up a dude using some hiking equipment or something.
Bond’s dick is poisonous in a few ways. If the disease doesn’t kill you, someone else will because everyone he fucks gets killed in a brutal fashion. For instance, he fucked Solange and she got killed in a hammock.
M puts a tracking device inside Bond’s arm and sets up the rest of the movie by telling Bond that he’s to join a poker game in Montenegro to compete against Le Chiffre. On a train he meets Vesper Lynd who tells him that if he loses the poker game, the government will have directly sponsored terrorists. Makes sense, I would actually love to see that movie.
I notice that everyone in this movie parks their car while still going 40 miles an hour.
The movie just turned into an episode of The World Series Of Poker. Daniel Craig keeps making moves on Eva Green and I can’t tell if she is lucky or she’s a brave actress. He’s attractive for the most part but I can’t quite put my finger on why or how. Sometimes he’s a good looking dude but other times he seems to be a raisin on legs. His face looks like when your fingers are in water too long and they start to prune. He’s only 38 here, not 52 like I said before but he looks like he was raised by a chainsaw.
After playing poker for 4 hours, Le Chiffre is attacked by the Uganda dudes over the money he lost from not blowing up the airplane. It’s awesome to see a villain that isn’t in control. In fact, he’s choked out like a total puss. And I totally get that the black dude is an African warlord but having him still use a machete to chop off a girls arm seems totally stereotypical. Did he travel with he machete all the way from Uganda or did he stop in Montenegro to get a fresh one? There are just too many questions. Either way it was pointless because Bond kills his ass before he can actually chop off any limbs. Afterwards Bond looks in the mirror and I’m wondering what happened to the cuts on his face from the plane scene.
After going all out, Jeffery Wright buys Bond back in if the CIA can bring in Le Chiffre. This seems like treason. When he gets back, Bond is instantly roofed and runs around like DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street. Bond then dies. Literally fucking dies. It’s only by luck that Vesper shows up to save him.
Bond dismantles the entire table with a straight flush. I’m just glad it wasn’t the stupid 4 aces or royal flush that most poker movies do. Plus they didn’t do the reveal in slow motion so it was appreciated.
The poker is all over and there is still 40 fucking minutes. Vesper is kidnapped, apparently by Snidely Whiplash because Bond chases them but finds her bound in the middle of the road. He swerves and crashes, Le Chiffre captures him because Mathis is his friend. Next comes everyone’s favorite testicle torture scene. Some dude just shows up and shoots Le Chiffre in the fucking head. Guess Bond is going to get around to that after all.
Weird scenes with Bond in a chair, apparently in heaven. Mathis is taxed. Bond seems like he’s crippled. After transferring the money to MI6, he bones Vesper. Bond loves starting in a half guard, with one of his legs over the woman’s. It’s strange.
Bond is ready to quit for love. This affirms that this one is a prequel because Bond hates women two seconds after shooting. And I don’t mean his gun.
M calls Bond to tell him that the treasury department still hasn’t received the 120 million. He checks Vesper’s phone like an untrusting girlfriend and finds a text saying to meet in 30 minutes. He then follows her like he deserves a restraining order. Love the scenes when Bond is sure she betrayed him and he just stops giving a fuck if he gets shot.
You’d think a town as old as Venice would have an entire building held up with more than just a two tank air balloon. I mean… after Bond shoots it we see a broken Heineken bottle. What if that bottle fell from the elevator and pierced the tank? It would just destroy the entire building because someone was getting an afternoon buzz on? That’s irresponsible.
Vesper kills herself after Bond kills a dude with a nail gun. The way she screams for air and reaches for Bond is pretty brutal. In fact, it’s the most brutal death in the movie and it wasn’t even violent at all. After freeing her from the elevator, Bond gives her mouth to mouth which turns into a weird kissing. He goes back to the body before the camera cuts so I’m not sure which base he gets to before it’s all said and done.
Bond calls Vesper a bitch while talking to M. He’s cold. Now the mystery is who was behind it all? Well kinda, they tell us it’s Mr. White. Like fucking Clue, it’s Mr. White.
All in all, this is my second favorite Bond movie after Goldeneye. Which means my two favorite movies are both the first movies by new Bonds. Daniel Craig makes for a good bond, I was on board the second they announced him. Nowadays, the rumor for the next Bond is Idris Elba, a rumor that I’m 100% on board with. That man is smooth as fuck. The only reason it probably won’t happen is that he’s only 4 years younger than Daniel Craig so what’s the point? Bet you thought I was going to say the downside is that he’s black, didn’t you? You assholes.