Number 21
in the Bond film series, Casino Royale gets to the roots of the British Secret
Service agent, before he's attained his double-0 status. He's still charming
and he's still deadly, but this new James Bond played by Daniel Craig is also
human.
"The action
scenes are very Bond but hopefully a little more realistic than previous Bond
films," director Martin Campbell told SPACE.com at a press gathering in New York.
It's James
Bond in the raw. He falls in love and gets his hands dirty, making for both
sweaty and bloody action scenes, which as intended, are more realistic than the
gadget-heavy stunts of past films.
"In Golden
Eye it was pretty conventional in terms of a Bond film. The character was very
much the Bond we've all been brought up with. In this one, he goes to a much
darker kind of process, quite honestly, he gets poisoned, he gets the hell
beaten out of him in the torture scene. The violence is much less [computer-generated],
it's much grittier and tougher--he bleeds a lot. He's much more vulnerable, he
falls in love, genuinely falls in love," said Campbell.
The film sticks
close to Ian Fleming's 1953 novel of the same name, so you won't see the mad
gadget-inventor Q. "We kept away from gadgets. It just doesn't sort of fit the
tone of the movie," Campbell said.
Stellar
cast
The super
spy's first mission involves jet-hopping to locations such as the Bahamas, Uganda, Italy and Madagascar, in a quest to take down the banker to the world's terrorist
organizations, the villain Le Chiffre. Along the way, he doesn't miss out on
the cliche one-night-stand with sensual Solange played by Caterina Murino [image],
girlfriend of one of the bad guys.
Bond is
self-sufficient as always, but he is joined in the new movie by a stellar cast
of characters who have depth and allure of their own. The outcome is an
engaging story that pulls at your heartstrings and intellect.
For
example, when Bond girl Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green [image],
plops down in a train-car table across from Bond, she says "I'm the money."
Bond replies, "worth every penny." The line harks to past films, but with a new
twist: Vesper isn't blushing pink at the mere sight of Bond, and she doesn't
sport a bikini.
Instead,
Vesper charms the pants off Bond, who reveals he's not immune to falling in
love.
The villain,
played by Danish star Mads Mikkelsen [image],
shows that the bad guy is just as complex as our hero and perhaps more so.
Trumping the Goldfingers and Dr. Nos, motivated by their hunger for world
domination, Le Chiffre is in it for the money. Rather than being on top of the
world, Le Chiffre is fragile, a fact underscored by a visible scar above his eye.
And he weeps blood, adding, Mikkelsen said, "something fragile, I guess,
something weird," to his character.
Mental
combat
The eye
also makes it tricky for Bond to read Le Chiffre in a palm-sweating poker game.
Secret
Service intelligence reveals that Le Chiffre is planning to raise money in a
high-stakes poker game at Le Casino Royale. 'M' assigns 007 to play against
him, knowing that if Le Chiffre loses, it will destroy his organization.
In a game
where the stakes are not measured in dollars but rather human lives, every hand
could be their last. "It's not about the game. It's about losing your life.
There's a lot of things at stake in this game, and so we wanted to focus on
drama as well in this game," Mikkelsen said.
"It was a
fight. We never have a physical fight in the movie. That was our physical
fight," Craig said.
When the
curtain falls, Casino Royale works as a Bond film. Fans will get their
million-dollar car chases, including the new Aston Martin DBS that sets a new
record with eight cannon rolls. And there are still the witty, and perhaps
cheesy, one liners, with a stylized Bond walking away from the fires and bloody
fights with a suave strut--a natural for Craig.
"I want it
to be as stylish as it possibly can. That's all I ever wanted to maintain,"
Craig said.
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