Casino Royale (2006/DVD-Video + Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B+ Sound: B/A- Extras: B- Film: B-
It is
funny how people react to success of late.
Before he even had a chance to be seen, there was actually a strange,
bizarre, goofy campaign against new James Bond Daniel Craig to play the
role. Whole websites were set up trying
to get producers to drop him, fans to reject him and the public to skip him in
any Bond film. Then there was the
article asking if we needed James Bond.
So in the face of that nonsense, the third version of Casino Royale is released as the 21st
James Bond film in the official series and it becomes the most critically
successful Bond since For Your Eyes Only
(1981) and one of the biggest hits the series ever had. So how did things go so right?
For one
thing, the producers finally broke their own rule that assumed the public no
longer wanted to see Bond in dark thrillers but instead in flashy, overblown
productions and the last two Brosnan Bonds sadly seemed to confirm this. However, they were the two worst, most
over-the-top films in the series and it was time for the series to start over
again. Getting to finally do this from
the very beginning with a great book never made correctly did not hurt either.
The first
version was a live TV show on CBS in 1954 with a filmed kinescope record
surviving. It is interesting and was not
a hit in its time. Then there is the
spoofy big budget 1967 feature film that did business, but had much, much less
to do with the book and much more to do with the late 1960s
counterculture. It was a moderate hit.
The new
version introduces Craig, an already impressive actor, as a tougher, more
believable, more modern and more blatantly masculine Bond than political
correctness has allowed for since Moore left the role. It was time for Bond to get dirty again and
where Licence To Kill (1989) showed
the boldness, daringness and willingness to go there (the film had mixed box
office), it took all this time for the audience to catch up.
Going
back to the beginning literally (as Quentin Tarantino was interested in doing
when it seemed the book was in play for this remake) could have been done, but
that would have been too contrived and five actors ago. Instead, by-passing The Cold War that put
Bond (and creator/author Ian Fleming) on the map, Bond arrives post-9/11 (a key
reason people responded to this film) as a new rookie spy who could get things
done with the new technological and terroristic threats facing us and one of
the reasons he succeeds simply is because of how human and for real he is.
That
combination is a winner and Craig hit the nail on the head doing that scene
after scene thanks to director Martin Campbell, whose Goldeneye revived the series and launched Brosnan in 1995. It was the first post-Cold War Bond and was a
pleasant hit. Campbell comes up with a
new style and approach, using few digital effects and taking the long way to
deal with the original book in an updated screenplay by the Neil Purvis/Robert
Wade team (who many fell like this critic nearly killed the series, no matter
how nice they reportedly are) with a rewrite by red hot Paul Haggis. Unfortunately, the script throws out too much
of the original book and is not always consistent on its own, but Craig is so
good, his performance plows over the shortcomings along with Stuart Baird’s,
A.C.E., editing.
This is
also the longest Bond at 144 minutes and with the script dumping the ingenious
card playing Fleming wrote out and changing the game itself to something
simpler, it takes a great point of the book and turns it into a plot point that
the character’s are more concerned with than the audience who just wants to see
if Bond can stop the funding of terrorism.
A few scenes ring false, but the film has more hits than misses.
Eva Green
is interesting as the ambiguous Vesper Lynd, Mads Mikkelsen is a revised Le
Chiffre (more serious and to take us away from icons who played him like Peter
Lorre and A comic Orson Welles) and Jeffrey Wright is CIA agent and future Bond
confidant Felix Leiter. With no “Q” or
Miss Moneypenny around, Judi Dench gets in her best Work as “M” since Tomorrow Never Dies and seems to have a
refreshing new feel for it. The casting
also works to the film’s advantage.
However,
to echo my colleague, the Broccoli/Saltzman touch is missing here, but I would
argue that the Broccoli Family has a chance to build up a Bond era with a new
kind of panache and richness worthy of the classics and if they make the next
few films as seriously and as grounded in this new reality and the Fleming
spirit, this series could really shine again.
Of course, Craig is a must to keep, who is good for six-to-seven more
Bonds at least.
Unlike
recent Bonds, this new Casino Royale
is the first one in a long time to have the backing of a major studio in major
form. While MGM/UA in the early 1980s
had their act together, the company drifted into mini-major status as it went
top being simply MGM again, but Sony/Columbia backed this with outstanding
marketing and though the budget was not pumped up like the last few Brosnan
Bonds, the fact it made more money than they did means it was far more
profitable.
I hope
the makers resist the temptation to go to outer space (especially literally)
because there is plenty of untouched material in the Fleming books and with
more original ideas, they could make a more consistent film next time out. That’s what fans are expecting and until
then, this will be one of the most-watched commercial hits of the last few
years. Will the playback quality of these
new disc versions further that?
The film
is the first Bond ever shot in Super 35mm and though it has some good visual
moments, you can tell this is not the series at its Panavision best. Except for the first three Sean Connery and
first two Roger Moore Bonds, all have been shot in real anamorphic
Panavision. Phil Meheux, B.S.C., was
responsible for one of those scope Bonds in Goldeneye, the first Pierce Brosnan Bond, but the makers decided to
finally go this way and it just worked.
There is
the black and white opening, but it is the kind of grayish commercial black and
white that has no deep silver content and is a brief flashback pre-title and
the shortest pre-title to date. At least
the biggest action sequence does not happen in the beginning.
After a
new advanced digital credits sequence by Daniel Kleinman, who has been creating
these for the series since Goldeneye
and first used Bond as a reference point for the classic Pat Benatar Music
Video for Sex As A Weapon. Going from that video to the Brosnan credits
to this are a lesson in themselves in how video graphics have grown over the
last quarter-century. These are smooth
and different from all previous Bond credits, most notably the absence of the
female nudes.
When it
goes to full color, Meheux continues the dark overtones and as in the black and
white footage, a motif of slightly hot whites permeates the film
throughout. Though Super 35 has this
tendency, he is purposely pushing it in subtle ways for what we could say is a
paradoxical means: that the film takes
place in 2006, yet still comes with a heart and soul from the 1953 book. The silver screen with a little less silver
throughout and not trying to be Film Noir, yet is interested in conjuring the
detective and police films of the time with their “official” anti-Noir
quasi-documentary approach; a pre-spy filmmaking look for a man who is about to
become the secret agent.
In both
formats, the limits of this are shown, ones that would be less of a problem if
this were real scope or flat 1.85 shooting.
Detail can be a problem at times in ways that even with some digital
enhancements, are noticeable and distracting in both formats. The anamorphically enhanced DVD cannot handle
all the detail and style that the 35mm print had, but the 1080p digital High
Definition image is a major improvement and in the Video White, the blown-out
look looks less like an old Music Video.
Video Black is also better and because the film has the luxury of the
room of a 50GB Blu-ray, there are still more than enough great moments, shots
and high quality HD moments that this will be a major picture demo for years.
Then
there is the sound. For years, the Bond
films in the series were monophonic.
Ironically, the 1967 Casino
Royale was the first to offer multi-channel sound when Columbia made 70mm
blow-ups with 6-track magnetic stereo, something the actual series did not do
until 1979’s Moonraker!
Both had
five of the six channels behind the screen.
The series eventually started using Dolby noise reduction beginning with
35mm prints (only) on Moonraker and
70mm 4.1 magnetic Dolby on 1983’s Octopussy. For Goldeneye,
Bond finally went 5.1 for good and it put the series back on the map. The films back to the early days always had
sound with character (Goldfinger
(1964) and Diamonds Are Forever
(1971) received Oscar nominations over their sound) and the producers often
pushed sound beyond the great music in ways they do not always get credit
for. They have lagged at times, but not
for long.
This new Casino Royale has the best sound design
since Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and
puts the series back on track sonically.
Even more than the picture, the sound design is very impressive and
while both discs offer Dolby Digital 5.1, the Blu-ray’s PCM 5.1 mix is as exciting
as the DTS 12” LaserDiscs and DTS DVDs of Goldeneye
and Tomorrow Never Dies for
all-around sonic impact. Sure, this is a
grittier thriller and one can criticize the David Arnold score for being more
John Barry than it should be, but this is so much better than most action films
of the last five years that this PCM will be a home theater standard for a very
long time even if it is only 16 bit/48kHz.
Extras
are the same on both versions, including the Music Video for the talented Chris
Cornell’s theme song You Know My Name,
which is somewhat ambitious but very unmemorable. After just listening to it, no one seems to
know the lyrics, let alone anyone’s name.
Oh, well. You also get two new
featurettes shot in HD and viewable that way exclusively on Blu-ray: Becoming Bond and James
Bond: For Real. Offering much
more than expected, it shows the amazing hard work that went into the
production and is up there with all the great extras everyone is enjoying on
the Ultimate Edition Bond sets.
Finally,
there is the great featurette Bond Girls
Are Forever, one a special DVD offered at “an electronics chain store” to
promote Bond DVDs. We actually reviewed
it and you can find that review at:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/143/Bond+Girls+Are+Forever+(Documentary
We have
also looked at this Bond before via our theatrical film critic who liked it
less than this critic did and we offer than review link below with all four
original Ultimate Edition Bond DVD
sets. That is 40 DVDs, of the first 20
films and here are the links to all of these fine sets:
Casino Royale (2006 Theatrical
Film Review)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4600/Casino+Royale+(2006/Theatrical
James Bond Ultimate Collection
Volume One
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4785/James+Bond+Ultimate
James Bond Ultimate Collection
Volume Two
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5056/James+Bond
James Bond Ultimate Collection
Volume Three
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4708/James+Bond+Ultimate
James Bond Ultimate Collection
Volume Four
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4709/James+Bond+Ultimate
James Bond Ultimate Collector’s
Set (42 discs
from all four box sets above + the 2006 Casino Royale DVD set)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5930/James+Bond+–+Ultimate+Collector
- Nicholas Sheffo
