I finally watched "Casino Royale." The short review (as I'm in no mood to write another monster-sized movie review):
1. Exceptionally corny dialogue at some points.
2. Self-defibrillation? At least it failed.
3. Interesting combination of boring card game plus cool chases, especially the first chase, largely on foot, in which Bond is clearly outmatched by a Parkour (a.k.a. yamakasi) expert (none other than Sebastien Foucan plus a stunt double). Oh, yeah: one movie quote was running through my mind as I watched this scene: "This kid ran down a cephalopoid on foot."
4. Lots of twists kept me guessing, but I was pretty sure the female lead would betray Bond. I didn't expect the discovery of her innocence at the end, though.
5. Torture the balls! When they cut the bottom out of the chair, I was hoping they were going to force-feed him prune juice and just... wait.
6. Too bad the supercar lasted barely thirty seconds in the car chase.
7. Yes, the critics are right: a grittier Bond.
8. For a guy who claims to hate guns, Daniel Craig seems to handle them well.
9. Big laugh when Bond starts sucking Vesper's fingers in the shower.
10. Hooray that Felix Leiter is once again black. Say "no" to a whiter Leiter!
11. French without subtitles! Hooray!
12. Giancarlo Gianinni! Hooray! And he looks younger than I expected. I remember him looking old and gritty in "Saving Grace." Doesn't seem to have aged much.
13. Very good fight scenes; I wondered whether Nick Powell, the dude who choreographed the excellent fight scenes in "The Bourne Identity," was behind the fights in "Casino Royale." They had about the same flavor. But no: "Casino Royale's" fight choreographer is... uh... I just looked the movie up on AllMovie.com, but the only listing is for stunts, and there we see Sebastien Foucan. I have no idea whether the guy is a martial arts expert; he's generally associated with "free running."
14. Judi Dench as M again! Hooray!
15. I didn't expect Le Chiffre to be killed off long before the end of the movie. Bravo to the scriptwriters for that one.
16. No Q? What the hell?!
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Thursday, May 17, 2007
quick thoughts on "Casino Royale"
3 comments:
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I watched 40 minutes and turned it off. Worst bond movie ever.
ReplyDelete16, answered.
ReplyDeleteDet. Steve McGarrett, I mean Jack Lord, will always be Felix Leiter in my book. I sure miss Sean's first 5 Bond movies. This Bond was just too hard to believe--returning to the game minutes after dying--I returned to teaching a week after an appendix operation and that was nearly too soon.
ReplyDeleteLater,
John from Daejeon