The Job is Done (#39: Casino Royale)

I'd have been the dead one.

N64 made everyone a Bond fan with GoldenEye. If you're of a certain age (roughly 25-35), you probably (and happily) wasted a solid year of your life playing this game relentlessly with three friends. I've seen most of the Bond movies (at least bits and pieces of them) over the years, but none of them matter nearly as much to me as mutliplayer GoldenEye in paintball mode. 

 

#39: Casino Royale

This may be why Casino Royale is my favorite James Bond movie. Famous for ditching (or at least, minimizing) the overstuffed trappings of the 007 franchise, the first film of the Daniel Craig era demands attention in its own right rather than coasting on the sails of former glories.
 

It declares its purpose from the get-go with a brutal assassination shot in grainy black and white: this is Bond without the bullshit. Close on the heels of that haymaker of an opener comes one of the best action sequences ever filmed: a parkour-influenced chase of a bombmaker (played by the amazing Sébastien Foucan). My favorite part has Foucan lithely sliding through a narrow opening in a construction site, while Craig just bulldozes right through the drywall - a great metaphor for his "blunt instrument" Bond.

Over the course of the movie, that blunt instrument gets sharpened into the scalpel with a taste for dry martinis that filmgoers know well, despite his many iterations. The transition from bare knuckles to french cuffs makes more sense than it has any right to, which is really the movie's greatest achievement.

The plot is still quite overstuffed - I'll confess that so much happens it's hard to remember what  is happening, if you know what I mean. But it lends itself to mutiple repeat viewings that way. It's also broken up into essentially four distinct acts: Act I: Becoming 007; Act II: The Ocean Club; Act III: The Poker Game; Act IV: Venice. So when you just can't make it through the whole thing on Friday night, there's a logical place to stop and pick up the next night (like we did). Plus, the ride's so much fun.

Also, Eva Green: best Bond girl ever or best just in general ever? You be the judge.

FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER

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