Casino Royale
| Fandom | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Casino Royale |
| Abbreviation(s): | |
| Creator: | Martin Campbell (director), Ian Fleming (novels) |
| Date(s): | 2006 |
| Medium: | film |
| Country of Origin: | USA, UK, Germany, Czech Republic |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Film
The 21st James Bond film, considered a reboot of the franchise, is the third adaptation of the Casino Royale novel. It is the first of the Daniel Craig Bond movies, and shows his promotion to 00 status and first assignment. The plot has Bond on an assignment to bankrupt terrorist financier Le Chiffre in a high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro; Bond falls in love with Vesper Lynd, a treasury employee assigned to provide the money he needs for the game. The film begins a story arc that continues in the 2008 film, Quantum of Solace.
Plot
MI6 operative James Bond gains promotion to 00 agent status by assassinating two targets: traitorous section chief Dryden at the British Embassy in Prague and his contact, Fisher.
In Uganda, the mysterious Mr. White introduces Steven Obanno, a high-ranking member of the Lord's Resistance Army, to Le Chiffre, an Albanian private banker to terrorists. Obanno entrusts Le Chiffre with a large sum of money to invest; Le Chiffre subsequently buys put options on aerospace manufacturer Skyfleet, betting on the company's failure given his insider knowledge of a terrorist attack.
In Madagascar, Bond pursues bomb-maker Mollaka to an embassy, killing him and blowing up the building. In London, MI6 chief M admonishes Bond for causing an international incident and ignoring her orders to capture Mollaka alive. Clues point to corrupt Greek official Alex Dimitrios, whom Bond finds in the Bahamas. After winning his 1964 Aston Martin DB5 in a poker game and seducing his wife Solange, Bond pursues Dimitrios to Miami and kills him. Bond then thwarts the destruction of Skyfleet's prototype airliner, costing Le Chiffre his entire investment, $101,206,000 in total. Due to Dimitrios' failure to carry out the attack, his wife Solange is subsequently tortured and killed.
To recoup his clients' lost money, Le Chiffre organizes a high-stakes Texas hold 'em tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro, syndicate slots kasino. MI6 enters Bond in the tournament, believing a defeat will force Le Chiffre to seek asylum with the British government in exchange for information on his clients. Bond is paired with Vesper Lynd, a British Treasury agent protecting the $10 million buy-in. During their train ride, they assess and make insightful guesses about each other. In Montenegro, they meet their contact René Mathis.
Bond seems to gain the upper hand, deducing Le Chiffre's “tell”. Obanno ambushes Le Chiffre but allows him to continue playing to win back the money. Obanno's bodyguard spots Bond and Vesper, but Bond kills him and Obanno both. After comforting a traumatized Vesper, Bond loses his stake because Le Chiffre has been tipped off about his own tell. Vesper refuses to cover the $5 million rebuy, but fellow player Felix Leiter, a CIA agent, agrees to stake Bond enough money to continue in exchange for taking Le Chiffre into American custody.
Le Chiffre's lover Valenka poisons Bond's martini with digitalis. Retrieving an antidote and defibrillator from his Aston Martin DBS V12, Bond passes out but Vesper rescues him. Bond returns to the game, which culminates in a $115 million hand that Bond wins with a straight flush. Apparently tipped off by Mathis, Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper and uses her to trap Bond. Le Chiffre brings the captives to an abandoned ship and tortures Bond to reveal the account number and password to the winnings, but Bond refuses. Mr. White bursts in and kills Le Chiffre as punishment for betraying the trust of his organization by gambling with their money, leaving Bond and Vesper alive.
Bond awakens in an MI6 hospital and has Mathis arrested as a traitor. After transferring the winnings, Bond spends time recovering with Vesper at his side and the two fall in love. He resigns from MI6 and they run away to Venice. When M reveals the money was never deposited, Bond realizes Vesper has betrayed him. He follows her to a handoff of the money, where gunmen take her captive as soon as they spot him. Bond shoots the building's flotation devices, causing the foundation to sink into the Grand Canal. He kills the gunmen, but Vesper is imprisoned in an elevator plunging into the rising water. Seeing Bond wishes to rescue her, she locks the door, indicating he should save himself. Bond is unable to free Vesper before she drowns. Mr. White escapes with the money.
M informs Bond the organization behind Le Chiffre[N 1] threatened to kill Vesper's lover unless she became a double agent. When Bond coldly renounces Vesper as a traitor, saying "the bitch is dead", M deduces that she likely made a deal later with White, trading the money for Bond's life. Bond returns to service. Realizing Vesper left her phone to help him, he checks the contacts and locates Mr. White at an estate in Lake Como. Shooting him in the leg, 007 introduces himself: "The name's Bond. James Bond."
Fanworks
The introduction of a less experienced and less refined Bond, as well as the retention of Judi Dench as M, made shipping Bond a lot more appealing to many fans. As well as Bond/M, other pairings include Bond/Le Chiffre, Bond/Villiers, Bond/Vesper, Bond/Felix Leiter, and Bond/OMC or OFC. Casino Royale has been a popular yuletide fandom since its release in 2006, with new fic every year from 2006-2009.
James Bond/Le Chiffre experienced a slight revival after Hannibal, starring Le Chiffre's actor Mads Mikkelsen as the eponymous Dr. Lecter, debuted only a few months after the fic-heavy Skyfall came out. Le Chiffre is frequently depicted as a relative of Hannibal Lecter in crossovers.
Fanfic
Queen of Spades by astolat, for Yuletide 2006 was an influential Bond/M fic that was popular in part for its characterisation of M as a strong and sexy older woman. It has fanart and podfic made for it as well.
Fanvids
One-Night Fandoms by eruthros and thingswithwings included Casino Royale in their tribute vid to Yuletide.
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 94% based on 257 reviews, with an average rating of 7.87/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Casino Royale disposes of the silliness and gadgetry that plagued recent James Bond outings, and Daniel Craig delivers what fans and critics have been waiting for: a caustic, haunted, intense reinvention of 007." It is the second-highest rating for a Bond film on the site (alongside From Russia with Love and Dr. No) behind Goldfinger, which earned a 99% score. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100 based on 46 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.
Craig's performance and credibility were particularly praised. During production, Craig had been subject to debate by the media and the public, as he did not appear to fit Ian Fleming's original portrait of the character as tall, dark and suave. The Daily Telegraph compared the quality of Craig's characterization of Bond to Sean Connery's and praised the script as smartly written, noting how the film departed from the series' conventions. The Times compared Craig's portrayal of the character to that of Timothy Dalton, and praised the action as "edgy", with another reviewer citing in particular the action sequence involving the cranes in Madagascar. Critics Paul Arendt of BBC Films, Kim Newman of Empire, and Todd McCarthy of Variety all described Craig as the first actor to truly embody Ian Fleming's James Bond from the original novel: ironic, brutal and cold. Arendt commented, "Craig is the first actor to really nail 007’s defining characteristic: he's an absolute swine".
The film was similarly well received in North America. MSNBC gave the movie a perfect 5 star rating. The film was described as taking James Bond "back to his roots", similar to From Russia with Love, where the focus was on character and plot rather than the high-tech gadgets and visual effects that were strongly criticized in Die Another Day. Entertainment Weekly named the film as the fifth best of the series, and chose Vesper Lynd as the fourth best Bond girl in the series. Some newspaper columnists and critics were impressed enough by Craig's performance to consider him a viable candidate for an Academy Award nomination.
Roger Ebert gave the film a four out of four star rating, and wrote that "Craig makes a superb Bond ... who gives the sense of a hard man, wounded by life and his job, who nevertheless cares about people and right and wrong," and that the film "has the answers to all my complaints about the 45-year-old James Bond series," specifically "why nobody in a Bond movie ever seems to have any real emotions." Time Out New York's Joshua Rothkopf called Craig "the best Bond in the franchise's history," citing the actor's "crisp, hateful, Mamet-worthy snarl ... This is a screwed-up Bond, a rogue Bond, a bounder, a scrapper and, in the movie's astoundingly bleak coda, an openhearted lover." Vicky Allan of the Sunday Herald noted Bond himself, and not his love interests, was sexually objectified in this film. A moment where he rises from the sea is reminiscent of Ursula Andress in Dr. No; he feels "skewered" by Vesper Lynd's criticism of him; "and though it would be almost unthinkable now have a female character in a mainstream film stripped naked and threatened with genital mutilation, that is exactly what happens to Bond in [the film]." So although the film backed off from past criticism of Bond girls being sex objects, "the once invincible James Bond becomes just another joint at the meat market."This sentiment is shared by the University of Leicester's James Chapman, author of Licence to Thrill, who also notes Craig's Bond is "not yet the polished article"; he felt his incarnation of Bond is close to Fleming's because he is "humourless," but is also different because "Fleming's Bond did not enjoy killing; Craig's Bond seems almost to relish it." Andrew Sarris of The New York Observer wrote that this particular Bond film is "the very first that I would seriously consider placing on my own yearly 10-best list. Furthermore, I consider Daniel Craig to be the most effective and appealing of the six actors who have played 007, and that includes even Sean Connery."
Roger Moore wrote, "Daniel Craig impressed me so greatly in his debut outing, Casino Royale, by introducing a more gritty, unrefined edge to the character that I thought Sean [Connery] might just have to move over. Craig's interpretation was like nothing we'd seen on screen before; Jimmy Bond was earning his stripes and making mistakes. It was intriguing to see him being castigated by M, just like a naughty schoolboy would be by his headmaster. The script showed him as a vulnerable, troubled, and flawed character. Quite the opposite to my Bond! Craig was, and is, very much the Bond Ian Fleming had described in the books – a ruthless killing machine. It was a Bond that the public wanted." So impressed was Moore that he chose to buy the DVD. Raymond Benson, the author of nine Bond novels, called Casino Royale "a perfect Bond film."
The film met with mixed reactions from other critics. John Beifuss of The Commercial Appeal said, "Who wants to see Bond learn a lesson about ego, as if he were Greg Brady in his 'Johnny Bravo' phase?" Anthony Lane of The New Yorker criticized the more imperfect and self-aware depiction of the character, saying, "Even James Bond, in other words, wants to be 007."
Though American radio personality Michael Medved gave the film three stars out of four, describing it as "intriguing, audacious and very original ... more believable and less cartoonish, than previous 007 extravaganzas," he commented that the "sometimes sluggish pacing will frustrate some Bond fanatics." Commentators such as Emanuel Levy concurred, feeling the ending was too long, and that the film's terrorist villains lacked depth, although he praised Craig and gave the film a B+ overall. Other reviewers responded negatively, including Tim Adams of The Observer who felt the film came off uncomfortably in an attempt to make the series grittier.
In December 2006, Casino Royale was named the best film of the year by viewers of Film 2006. In 2009, UK ice cream company Del Monte Superfruit Smoothies launched an ice lolly moulded to resemble Craig emerging from the sea. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly named Casino Royale the 19th best film of the past 25 years.