On Golden Bond

Surf's up: Daniel Craig puts Roger Moore to shame as the buff new Bond in Casino Royale (Sony Pictures)

When Daniel Craig was anointed the new James Bond last fall, observers groused that the British actor was too intense, too craggy, too blond. Fair enough. But the numbing sameness of the various Bonds is precisely what had turned the franchise into such a buzzkill. While the series continued to ply us with guns, girls and gadgetry, the concept had ceased to be fun. The last three films — Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002) — were at once preposterous and utterly dull. It was high time for renewal.

Casino Royale, the 21st Bond film, doesn’t merely revitalize the British super spy  — it re-imagines him. It’s true that Craig is not as classically handsome as Sean Connery, Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan; his face is kind of frog-like, his ears stand out and he’d do well to exfoliate. But as he’s shown in films like The Mother and Layer Cake, Craig has the smoldering charisma of the young Connery. The difference is the stare. There’s no twinkle in Craig’s ice-blue gaze, no humour or kindness whatsoever. If looks could kill, this Bond wouldn’t need a gun.

Craig is also the most physically imposing 007 to date. Connery and Brosnan were merely fit; Craig is ripped. Built like a gladiator, he makes his predecessors look like gladiolas. The Bond films have always had an appreciation for physical beauty, but the subjects are typically women. New Bond girl Eva Green is lovely, but Craig is the eye candy here. The shots of him emerging bare-chested from the surf will fuel more than a few fantasies. But the aim is to demonstrate Bond’s new brawn. Craig’s tight-fitting shirts telegraph his aggression. He struts as though he could walk through walls. (At one point, he actually does.) Craig projects menace like no Bond before him.

The film is surprisingly true to Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel, with a few tweaks made to reflect our post-Cold War era. When the film opens, Bond is tailing members of an international terrorism ring. (At no point does the film address the ideology of these extremists.) The opening act boasts two magnificent set pieces: the first is a spectacularly agile foot chase through the capital of Madagascar, the second an even more heart-pounding pursuit on the runway at Miami International Airport.

Giving the evil eye: Stakes are high when bad guy Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) competes with Bond at poker. (Jay Maidment/Sony Pictures)

To strike at the heart of this nefarious network, however, Bond must confront a man named Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). That’s “cipher” in French, an apt handle for a guy who bankrolls extremists. With his sprayed-on hair, slightly effeminate features, mush-mouthed soliloquies and weepy left eye, Mikkelsen is marvelously creepy. He displays the cold professionalism of most Bond villains: he’s singularly lacking in smiles, sentimentality and sex drive. His one weakness is cards, and he has a habit of gambling his clients’ money on poker. Knowing that Le Chiffre has been entrusted with a large sum of dirty money, Bond buys his way into a high-stakes poker game in beautiful Montenegro in the hopes of discovering Le Chiffre’s sinister clientele. Bond is notoriously good at poker, and the game play is as taut as The Cincinnati Kid — albeit with an infinitely higher cost.

One of the reasons the Bond character has become so tiresome of late is his nonchalance, the way he downs cocktails and criminals with similar ease. Casino Royale imbues him with new grit. At one point, Bond and his female sidekick, British Treasury representative Vesper Lynd (Green), are waylaid in a staircase by a pair of murderous thugs. The ensuing fight is tense, harsh and unusually gory. Afterwards, while rinsing the blood off his tuxedo in his hotel bathroom, Bond gazes into the mirror, seemingly repulsed by his capacity for violence. This new Bond is brutal, unsparing, amoral and almost entirely humourless — all things a super spy should be.

While Craig’s performance is nothing short of revelatory, Casino Royale is also heightened by a number of stylish tricks. Martin Campbell is the first Bond director in a long while to demonstrate any sort of visual bravado. Shot in inky black and white, the pre-credit sequence has the noirish feel of Hitchcock; a hallucinogenic later scene with shaky camerawork and bleached-out lighting is reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream).

While the first two-thirds of the film have the exhilaration and intelligence of The Bourne Supremacy — to my mind, the best action-thriller of the past decade — Casino Royale goes a bit slack in the final act. Part of that is due to Fleming’s original novel. It unfolded at a more relaxed pace than the subsequent books and films, which always reserved the biggest bang for the end.

So maybe Casino Royale is lacking in endurance. But its urgency and excitement are absolutely breathtaking.

Casino Royale opens Nov. 17 across Canada.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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