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Title: Casino Royale (2006)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Daniel Craig | ... | ||
| Eva Green | ... | ||
| Mads Mikkelsen | ... | ||
| Judi Dench | ... | ||
| Jeffrey Wright | ... | ||
| Giancarlo Giannini | ... | ||
| Caterina Murino | ... | ||
| Simon Abkarian | ... | ||
| Isaach De Bankolé | ... |
Steven Obanno
(as Isaach De Bankole)
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| Jesper Christensen | ... | ||
| Ivana Milicevic | ... | ||
| Tobias Menzies | ... | ||
| Claudio Santamaria | ... | ||
| Sebastien Foucan | ... |
Mollaka
(as Sébastien Foucan)
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| Malcolm Sinclair | ... | ||
James Bond goes on his first ever mission as a 00. Le Chiffre is a banker to the world's terrorists. He is participating in a poker game at Montenegro, where he must win back his money, in order to stay safe among the terrorist market. The boss of MI6, known simply as M sends Bond, along with Vesper Lynd to attend this game and prevent Le Chiffre from winning. Bond, using help from Felix Leiter, Mathis and having Vesper pose as his partner, enters the most important poker game in his already dangerous career. But if Bond defeats Le Chiffre, will he and Vesper Lynd remain safe? Written by simon
Casino Royale is a major step-up from the flamboyant Die Another Day. Pierce Brosnan has been replaced by a young-ish Daniel Craig, there is no Q, no campy gadgets, no silly naked women silhouettes in the opening credits, no world-dominating super-colossus villains, no Miss Funnyfanny (or whatever), and no silly one-liners after killing bad guys. Basically everything that can date Bond film very quickly is gone. I never expected international espionage to look the way it has in past few Bond outings and I'm glad someone had the balls to go back to the hard-edged nature of the series, last seen in Licence to Kill.
The longest Bond movie so far, at 145 minutes, but it breezes by even though it reigns in on the normally excessive action scenes and depicts spying a more 'mundane' and 'realistic' manner (or at least as true as the series has been so far). But the one-thing that bugs me about action movies, particularly the Bond franchise, is that they are, most of the time, childish male fantasies with an indestructible hero who has fun shooting up the place and beds beautiful women. I would like something new for a change but Casino Royale does have Bond get hurt and go through more pain than he has previously.
Daniel Craig got a lot of hassle over his casting as Bond but not only does he have his youth as an advantage (he's the first 30-something to be cast in the role since Lazenby), he's also pretty damn trim, has the intensity Brosnan lacked and is surprisingly loose in a role that usually requires actors to be stiff and unemotional. It's also good to a fresh face in the role and who cares if he is blonde? Or the shortest actor to play him so far? I would have preferred that composer David Arnold went too. They didn't seem to be holding back on the amount of regular production team members who got axed. Even Vic Armstrong didn't return. I've never liked Arnold's work on the movies and I hate to think of it as something that's now exclusively HIS baby.
Unfortunately, as good as this fresh start to the franchise was, all of the goodwill that director Martin Campbell earned was completely undone by the follow-up Quantum of Solace, which is not only the worst Bond film so far, but one of the worst action films, and one of the worst films overall, that I have ever seen.
If Craig and Co. ever get around to making another, they've got a LOT to make up for.