Saw the first day first show of Casino Royale , in India atleast ...
I'm not going to spoil the fun by revealing about the new character but all those of you who believe they can predict Bond movies( I was onehyeah: ) will be in for a rude surprise...
PS:By the looks of it, Daniel Craig is going to stay for a long time:cool2:
I'm looking forward to the movie tomorrow, but Daniel Craig does look Bond IMO... a lot tougher and more character than Brosnan. Brosnan was too soft for the role, he should have stuck to sappy romantic movies.
I'm looking forward to the movie tomorrow, but Daniel Craig does look Bond IMO... a lot tougher and more character than Brosnan. Brosnan was too soft for the role, he should have stuck to sappy romantic movies.
You got that absolutely right... Though, initially, I was too with the anti craig group.... but now I'm totally behind him.:hap2: They got the right guy for the role. He's tough, impulsive and a lot more agressive than Mr. Brosnan...
Come on, that's not how it is... Don't you think it was a refreshing change that you actually could not predict each n every scene and know frm the beginning that the good guy is gonna win?
WARNING: I didnt use SPOILER tags because this movie is based on a book many decades old. Also, the old movie was released almost 40 years ago.
And what I may think of as an introduction to the main movie, you may call that as a spoiler. So, read on if you want to. But if you are absolutely obsessed with the movie and dont want to know anything about it even though the story is 40 years old, then please dont read
CAST:
Daniel Craig as James Bond
Eva Green as Vesper Lynd
Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre
Judi Dench as M
Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter
Giancarlo Giannini as Rene Mathis
PLOT:
Set in the post 9/11 world of terrorism and terrorist financers, this movie mainly revolves around the gambling tables of Casino Royale in Montenegro.
Le Chiffre is a financier who accepts money from terrorists and invests them in the stock market and returns the profits to the terrorists.
But one of his terrorist plots to blow up a brand new prototype aircraft (so that the shares of that company plummet and he makes a fortune) is foiled by none other than Agent 007 in the Miami airport.
Due to this, Le Chiffre loses $100 Million. The people who have paid him the money want their money back. The only way for Le Chiffre to make such a huge sum of money quickly is to gamble.
The rest of the movie deals with the gambling between Le Chiffre and James Bond in Casino Royale which is a fictional casino in Montenegro. There are other players too but the focus is on these two.
MI6 has released $ 15 million for James Bond to start gambling. He has to make sure that Le Chiffre doesn’t win. If Le Chiffre emerges the winner, as Vesper says, the British government will be a direct sponsor of terrorism as the money will be used by terrorists.
DIRECTION:
Direction is amazing. The locales are very scenic and breathtaking. The quaint old streets of Montenegro, the beautiful hills in Southern Italy and locations in Venice. Beautiful. The action sequences are also shot brilliantly. One of the best action sequences takes place in the beginning of the movie when Bond tries to stop a terrorist attack at the Miami International airport. Even before that, a foot chase sequence when Bond chases after a man in Madagascar is also superb. The way that guy jumps and rolls and climbs buildings and scaffolding is mindblowing.
Emotions play big role in this movie. Very unlike most Bond movies. This movie shows Bond as more human than before. He is not almost superhuman like some of the previous movies have shown him to be. He is a mortal and since this is his first mission after being promoted to a Double O rank, he shows his immaturity. And as the movie progresses, you see him sort of grow and become more refined.
The scene where he breaks into M’s house after creating a major controversy in a foreign embassy in Madagascar and has a chat with her is one of my favourites. He shows his arrogance in that scene and M makes it clear that now, she thinks she promoted him too soon.
ACTING:
The scene where Le Chiffre tortures him really shows that Daniel Craig can act. You can really feel his pain during that sequence. He sure is a fine actor. But is he BOND? I don’t think so. He lacks something. Bond is supposed to suave sophisticated and handsome. Daniel Craig isn’t handsome. And he somehow lacks that class which Pierce Brosnan had. He is not BAD as Bond, but I wouldn’t say he is the best either. I think Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery were both better than Craig.
Eva Green too is really good in her role as Vesper Lynd. Vesper is an officer from the British treasury sent to keep an eye on Bond as he is after all gambling with $15 million of British government money. She plays the part of being very cold to Bond’s advances initially very well. And later gives in to her passion. She doesn’t look too great though. Most of my friends agreed that another woman who came in the beginning of the movie was way better looking than Eva Green.
Le Chiffre is amazing. Mads Mikkelsen plays his role to perfection. I think he was the best actor in the movie.
The other characters like Leiter, Mathis are good. They do their job well enough. Nothing extraordinary.
Judi Dench as Bonds’ boss M is as usual perfect. When she is angry with Bond, you can feel her wrath. And when Bond is in danger, she is also concerned for him. Every moment she is on screen is a delight.
The love story between Bond and Vesper is really nice. She is wary of Bond initially and this presents a challenge to Bond. He is attracted to her, not just physically. The chemistry between them is extremely good to see on screen.
The intensity at the gambling tables has also been shown very well. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I could feel myself sitting at the edge of my seat. Very tight and tense scenes.
CARS and GADGETS:
What is a Bond movie without a beautiful car and some hi-tech gadgets?? This is actually a major disappointment. The car is an Aston Martin DBS made by Aston Martin especially for this movie. And the car looks gorgeous and sounds glorious. But it hardly has any screen time. And that is a major disappointment. The gadgets too play a very minor role in this movie. They only gadget worth noting is a small machine which is in the glove compartment of his car and if attached to his chest, gives him an electric shock to prevent him from going into cardiac arrest.
And what was scandalous for me was that when James Bond is chasing down Le Chiffre and his goons in his Aston Martin, to stop him, they place a tied and bound Vesper in the middle of the road. After that what happens would have been comical in a Jackie Chan movie but just doesn’t fit in a James Bond movie. Bond swerves to avoid Vesper and the car FLIPS !! How ridiculous can it get ?? A low slung Aston Martin sports car flips when the driver swerves hard ??
I hated that part. In the book, Le Chiffre and his men pull off to the side of the road and lay spike strips. That would have made way more sense than this.
END RESULT:
Daniel Craig doesn’t really fit the role of Bond, but he isn’t too bad either. The action sequences are absolutely superb. The only major disappointment is the lack of gadgets and the very small role that the car plays in the movie. But then, in the original book, it was the same. Most of the books hardly had any gadgets. And the car in the book, a Bentley with Amherst Villiers superchargers also plays a minor role.
Overall, I would say this is a movie that you should certainly watch.
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE READ THE BOOK
WARNING: I didnt use SPOILER tags because this movie is based on a book many decades old. Also, the old movie was released almost 40 years ago.
And what I may think of as an introduction to the main movie, you may call that as a spoiler. So, read on if you want to. But if you are absolutely obsessed with the movie and dont want to know anything about it even though the story is 40 years old, then please dont read
CAST:
Daniel Craig as James Bond
Eva Green as Vesper Lynd
Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre
Judi Dench as M
Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter
Giancarlo Giannini as Rene Mathis
PLOT:
Set in the post 9/11 world of terrorism and terrorist financers, this movie mainly revolves around the gambling tables of Casino Royale in Montenegro.
Le Chiffre is a financier who accepts money from terrorists and invests them in the stock market and returns the profits to the terrorists.
But one of his terrorist plots to blow up a brand new prototype aircraft (so that the shares of that company plummet and he makes a fortune) is foiled by none other than Agent 007 in the Miami airport.
Due to this, Le Chiffre loses $100 Million. The people who have paid him the money want their money back. The only way for Le Chiffre to make such a huge sum of money quickly is to gamble.
The rest of the movie deals with the gambling between Le Chiffre and James Bond in Casino Royale which is a fictional casino in Montenegro. There are other players too but the focus is on these two.
MI6 has released $ 15 million for James Bond to start gambling. He has to make sure that Le Chiffre doesn’t win. If Le Chiffre emerges the winner, as Vesper says, the British government will be a direct sponsor of terrorism as the money will be used by terrorists.
DIRECTION:
Direction is amazing. The locales are very scenic and breathtaking. The quaint old streets of Montenegro, the beautiful hills in Southern Italy and locations in Venice. Beautiful. The action sequences are also shot brilliantly. One of the best action sequences takes place in the beginning of the movie when Bond tries to stop a terrorist attack at the Miami International airport. Even before that, a foot chase sequence when Bond chases after a man in Madagascar is also superb. The way that guy jumps and rolls and climbs buildings and scaffolding is mindblowing.
Emotions play big role in this movie. Very unlike most Bond movies. This movie shows Bond as more human than before. He is not almost superhuman like some of the previous movies have shown him to be. He is a mortal and since this is his first mission after being promoted to a Double O rank, he shows his immaturity. And as the movie progresses, you see him sort of grow and become more refined.
The scene where he breaks into M’s house after creating a major controversy in a foreign embassy in Madagascar and has a chat with her is one of my favourites. He shows his arrogance in that scene and M makes it clear that now, she thinks she promoted him too soon.
STORY:
The makers have RUINED the story. Totally!! When you say you are making a movie based on a book, you expect it to have changes but on the whole remain similar to the book.
Not in Casino Royale. Bloody people have changed the story, characters, everything. They have even changed the appearance of the characters. Not satisfied with that, they change the characters themselves, the only thing relating these new characters to the book is the name.
Felix Leiter as described in the book is supposed to be a white Texan with a smiling face and a mop of straw coloured hair. But what do we have in the movie ?? A black guy (with black hair and a beard!!) OMG!! What the hell were they thinking ??
Rene Mathis is supposed to be a long time friend and confidante of Bond. Casino Royale is not the first time he encounters him(unlike Lieter), but in the movie, they make him out to be a stranger. He is a top agent in the Deuxieme (French Intelligence Agency). But in this movie, they make him look suspicious and Bond suspects him of being a double agent.
And there are simply too many complications. In the book(which is set in the 1950s), Le Chiffre is an agent of SMERSH(the dreaded Soviet intelligence agency) and has squandered away some of SMERSH money and is gambling to get the money back.
And Vesper’s polish lover was captured by the Soviets and they blackmail her to become a double agent so that they don’t kill her lover. In the book, her lover is kidnapped by Le Chiffre’s men and she is forced to become a double agent.
But one thing I did like was the way they adapted the 1950s era story into the modern post 9/11 world.
And of course, in the book, Casino Royale is in the south of France whereas in the movie, it is in Montenegro. I have no complaints with the adaptation of the storyline into the 21st Century.
But some things aren’t meant to be changed. Like the characters, but they have changed them and it irritated me a lot.
Le Chiffre is amazing here too. The makers have at least retained him more or less how he is in the book. Cold, dispassionate and cruel. He is my favourite character from the movie by far.
ACTING:
The scene where Le Chiffre tortures him really shows that Daniel Craig can act. You can really feel his pain during that sequence. He sure is a fine actor. But is he BOND? I don’t think so. He lacks something. Bond is supposed to suave sophisticated and handsome. Daniel Craig isn’t handsome. And he somehow lacks that class which Pierce Brosnan had. He is not BAD as Bond, but I wouldn’t say he is the best either. I think Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery were both better than Craig.
Eva Green too is really good in her role. She plays the part of being very cold to Bond’s advances initially very well. And later gives in to her passion. She doesn’t look too great though. Most of my friends agreed that another woman who came in the beginning of the movie was way better looking than Eva Green.
Le Chiffre is amazing. Mads Mikkelsen plays his role to perfection. I think he was the best actor in the movie.
The other characters like Leiter, Mathis are good. They do their job well enough. Nothing extraordinary.
Judi Dench as Bonds’ boss M is as usual perfect. When she is angry with Bond, you can feel her wrath. And when Bond is in danger, she is also concerned for him. Every moment she is on screen is a delight.
The love story between Bond and Vesper is really nice. Vesper is an officer from the British treasury sent to keep an eye on Bond as he is after all gambling with $15 million of British government money.
She is wary of Bond initially and this presents a challenge to Bond. He is attracted to her, not just physically. The chemistry between them is extremely good to see on screen.
The intensity at the gambling tables has also been shown very well. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I could feel myself sitting at the edge of my seat. Very tight and tense scenes.
CARS and GADGETS:
What is a Bond movie without a beautiful car and some hi-tech gadgets?? This is actually a major disappointment. The car is an Aston Martin DBS made by Aston Martin especially for this movie. And the car looks gorgeous and sounds glorious. But it hardly has any screen time. And that is a major disappointment. The gadgets too play a very minor role in this movie. They only gadget worth noting is a small machine which is in the glove compartment of his car and if attached to his chest, gives him an electric shock to prevent him from going into cardiac arrest.
And what was scandalous for me was that when James Bond is chasing down Le Chiffre and his goons in his Aston Martin, to stop him, they place a tied and bound Vesper in the middle of the road. After that what happens would have been comical in a Jackie Chan movie but just doesn’t fit in a James Bond movie. Bond swerves to avoid Vesper and the car FLIPS !! How ridiculous can it get ?? A low slung Aston Martin sports car flips when the driver swerves hard ??
I hated that part. In the book, Le Chiffre and his men pull off to the side of the road and lay spike strips. That would have made way more sense than this.
END RESULT:
Daniel Craig doesn’t really fit the role of Bond, but he isn’t too bad either. The action sequences are absolutely superb. The only major disappointment is the lack of gadgets and the very small role that the car plays in the movie. But then, in the original book, it was the same. Most of the books hardly had any gadgets. And the car in the book, a Bentley with Amherst Villiers superchargers also plays a minor role.
Overall, I would say this is a movie that you should certainly watch but you will get irritated at times.
So, to conclude..... The movie is awesome. But if you have read the book, you are going to be disappointed.
They only gadget worth noting is a small machine which is in the glove compartment of his car and if attached to his chest, gives him an electric shock to prevent him from going into cardiac arrest.
err....thats not a gadget :S Its called a defibrillator.
I am still trying to think of a movie I hated more than this, but so far its been an excercise in futility
Daniel is simply too rough and tough in the movie. Maybe its written that way in the book (I havn't read it), but that doesnt mean I have to like it :no: No fancy cars, no gadgets at all! And eva wears too many clothes!!!
And if anything can be any worse, its the plot! Defeat the world biggest terrorist funder by beating him at a game of poker? :huh: That's the plot? You're telling me this book actually was a bestseller? However did fleming think of writing more after this!
This movie is to all other Bond movies what Mi3 was to all other Mi movies.
Its friggin' love story. As Nikhil said above, more drama, more action but with absolutely no gadgets, and the car got very little screentime - Its a Bond movie unlike all others before. Doesn't mean its bad at all, I liked it very much! Go see it, its all a matter of opinion.
Daniel Craig is here to stay as James Bond for a while though, there's no other way
Great movie ! I was in the anti-craig camp first but now i've changed my opinion. Btw this guys comes much closer than most other Bond (except connery) in portraying Ian Flemming's Bond.
Blade_Runner said:
Great movie just saw it today. A great departure from the stunt fests that Bond movies had become. With Casino Royale, the bond franchise returned to its roots and Daniel Craig has done a superb job, atleast 10 times better than what i earlier expected from him. Portraying a arrogant, a semi sadist agent. The overall feel of the movie is a bit different from other bond movies and has a dark feel to it, there is plenty of action but nothing over the top except the Aston Martin flipping scene Nikhil mentioned. Bond chasing the suicide bomber through the arena and the construction site and finally the embassy was one of the best i've seen. The direction is good but i personally found the length of the movie too long. Also the pacing dragged a bit during the Casino Royale setting. Mikkelsen and Judy Dench are great in the acting department. Eva Green as Vesper Lynd is great eye-candy and manages to do a convincing job. Overall i'd rate 8/10 for this movie.
This movie is to all other Bond movies what Mi3 was to all other Mi movies.
Its friggin' love story. As Nikhil said above, more drama, more action but with absolutely no gadgets, and the car got very little screentime - Its a Bond movie unlike all others before. Doesn't mean its bad at all, I liked it very much! Go see it, its all a matter of opinion.
Daniel Craig is here to stay as James Bond for a while though, there's no other way
...
hyeah: ) will be in for a rude surprise...
