Casino Royale (English, 2006)

Sirs and Mademoiselles! How would you like your Bond today? Rare, as in Roger Moore; or well-done as in Sean Connery? Do you like your Bond to be a suave, smooth metrosexual like Pierce Brosnan; or would you like to move back to the masculine, handsome hunk image of Bond with a well-chiselled body, hair on the chest and a rough, unsure edge to him? If the last one, sir, we have today in our Casino Royale - Daniel Craig.

Any long running franchise worth its salt has to keep on redefining its protagonist’s image with the times, and with the death of the feminine metrosexual man on the style scene, it was time for Bond to go back to the basics, to start being manly enough to be the man every woman wants. To achieve this, the producers picked up Daniel Craig as the man and the first Ian Fleming book as the story. Casino Royale tracks Bond chasing a terrorists’ financier who has lost terrorists’ money on stock markets and has to recover that money in a high-stakes poker game in Casino Royale.

I am not going to say anything more about the story, because story is not what we go to watch Bond films for. I am not a Bond fan, so I really don’t know what does one go to watch Bond films for anyway? Pathetic stories, pedestrian acting. Perhaps it’s the style, the impossible smoothness with which Bond behaves in impossible scenarios. If that, then Casino Royale fails. Daniel Craig simply does not have the style quotient of any of his predecessors. Or perhaps it is the contradiction of a man that Bond is –caring towards his girls and yet always two-timing them. If that, this movie is wonderful. Craig portrays the “women are his only weakness” part of Bond very well. Or is it the famous opening sequence of a Bond movie? If so, this movies opening sequence is superb. A stylish presentation of Bond acquiring his 00 status, followed by perhaps one of the greatest chase sequences ever.

Casino Royale is a welcome move away from the extra-gadget-friendly that Pierce Brosnan’s Bond had become. Casino Royale is a welcome move towards a manlier Bond. But it stops short somewhere. It does not make you go wide-eyed at the things Bond does, neither does it bring the smile on your face when you used to see a Bond getting out of a fight, straightening his tie, and walking into a party, his suit unblemished. In the attempt of going back to basics, Casino Royale becomes a movie too much like a ’80s Dharmendra (a Bollywood Actor) flick.

Recommendation – GO watch it, it’s a Bond flick, after all. You have to watch it even it is Bad, and this one is quite decent by Bond standards.

Rating – ✔✔