Royale without cheese

I just got home from seeing Casino Royale, and before I get to the review, I got a couple of open letters I need to send out:

Attention old people: If you're gonna go to the movie theater, and you insist on having someone with you repeat any and all lines of dialogue, please have the wherewithall to bring someone with better hearing than you. I spent half the movie trying to shhh you guys and the other half wanting to correct you.

Attention everyone who's been bitching about Daniel Craig being a bad choice to play Bond: Suck it, losers.

Now, on with the review:

I've always been a huge Bond fan. I've seen every film. I've seen every one since A View To A Kill in theaters. I even survived Never Say Never Again, the Dalton years and the cinematic near-death rattle that was The World Is Not Enough.

I'm so much of a fan that I know the whole formula and still come back for more:

After the gun barrel/dripping blood opening shot, we see Bond on a seemingly normal mission where he swoops in undetected after some bizarrely elaborate stunt or by posing as some businessman. He's found out, alarms start blaring and dozens of henchmen with the worst aim in history start shooting at him. Shortly thereafter, the bad guy gets away with the item Bond is there to retrieve and/or Bond has to pull off some other impossible stunt to escape. Then comes the credit sequence with the song that has no chance of being a hit single but is cool within the context of a Bond film, then the briefing of the new mission that is somehow related to the opening scene. Q shows up with a bunch of gadgets that are really built for one purpose that isn't really clear until the third act. Bond sleeps with a woman who is closely tied in with the bad guy, gets some important information from her, Bond taunts bad guy, bad guy gets mad, attempts to kill Bond and fails, captures Bond, announces his entire plan for world domination to Bond while he's strapped to some convoluted torture device and leaves to carry out his plan, Bond escapes and kills the torturer with his own torture device, goes in, saves the day and blows off a stern lecture from M to have sex with the girl. Credits roll and "James Bond Will Return".

With Casino Royale, take everything about that formula, with the exception of the opening credit sequence and "James Bond Will Return" and throw out the rest. This is pre-Bond. He's flawed, he's sloppy in his methods, he's still coming to grips with the psychological pitfalls of his line of work, and he actually capable of mistakes. He's still cocky and arrogant as hell, but this time it's more of first-week-on-the-job, shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of arrogance. If he fails, he immediately tries again. Most importantly, he's not afraid to get a little messy.

Sure, it turns the franchise on its ear. It's not the Bond we've seen so far, but that is the best part. I too am pissed that Peirce Brosnan got fired, but he couldn't have pulled this off. Don't get me wrong, Brosnan was great in the role, but he was too slick for this kind of a ride. They needed someone we didn't know too well. They needed someone who we couldn't see coming. We needed someone we didn't know if we could get behind right away. We needed Daniel Craig.

I believe Sean Connery was exactly what Bond should've been as an older character, and we saw in him a level of "Excuse me, I've got business to attend to." kind of professionalism. Roger Moore was too much of a glib smartass, not to mention the fact that you could tell every moment he called for a stunt double. Timothy Dalton, I'm convinced, was only there to make George Lazenby look better in the role. With Brosnan, we at least got a sense of history and an insight to how a life of killing has effected the character, but never enough to keep him from getting the job done.

Daniel Craig's Bond, much like the actor himself, has not yet come to grips with what this new job has in store for him. The job could very well be a death sentance ("From what I understand, double-o's have a very short life expectancy"), but if he pulls it off, he'll survive to see greater glory. The filmmakers made a brilliant choice to not play any hint of the original Bond theme until the end credits started, when James Bond becomes JAMES FUCKING BOND.

The bad guy this time isn't the same Bond villian we're used to. Le Chiffre could give a rat's ass about theatrics, he has no plans to take over the world, he's just desperately trying to do what he must do to survive, and if he succeeds, we're all pretty much fucked. After seeing Casino Royale, I felt cheated by the past few Bond villians. Looking back now, they were pretty weak:

Die Another Day: A Korean guy turns himself into a smug British white guy to sell conflict diamonds so he can buy a giant mirror?

The World Is Not Enough: Okay, so you got a guy who cannot feel pain, and his sole purpose was to push a fucking button? So much potential wasted.

Tomorrow Never Dies: This one was actually pretty good. A media mogul tries to incite World War III just to drive up ratings on his new news channel. This flick is like porno for Fox News executives.

GoldenEye: 006. The good news for him, he's had the same training as Bond, so he knows exactly how Bond would react in a bad situation. The bad news for him, vice versa.

The Living Daylights: What's the greatest threat to our huge arms deal? A cello player, that's who.

Licence to Kill: I couldn't accept Robert Davi as a legitimate bad guy after watching the Goonies. Despite Timothy Dalton's supposed strengths as Bond, I couldn't help but think that an annoying twelve-year-old asian kid who only thought he was James Bond could take this guy down.

A View To A Kill: Seriously, the bad guy tries to escape in a giant blimp. Next time, go for something that is A) not so easy to hit, B) moves faster than 20 MPH, and C) doesn't have your fucking name on the side of it!