Casino Royale

The opening sequence is in black and white. As a style element that is a nice idea, but style was missing there completely. It appeared as if someone found a switch to convert colour to gray scale in the most unimpressive way possible. The images was just flat (like my mobile phone pictures), without expression anymore. Maybe more sophisticated lighting should have been used there to produce more pronounced shadows. On the other hand maybe this was done for an horrendous amount of money and I completely failed to appreciate the trouble. In the way it is done, that style element is completely unnecessary. We learn how James Bond earned his 00 status.

But then we are back in colour and the villains are introduced before the opening action scene starts. Besides a for my taste too matrixian jumping – though it apparently is picturing an example of free running, never heard that before – it is really cool and sets a nice pace. Things blow up, construction machines are used for destruction (nice reference to the tank chase through St. Petersburg in Goldeneye) and a lot of rounds get emptied. Everything that the opening needs.

The pure action reduces a bit in the following, making space for what in RPG is known as 'char-building': Bond in his very first 00-mission needs to be introduced and defined. Enough space for typical Bond-dialogues and, unfortunately, product placement. That is probably the most annoying part of the movie: The all to obvious product placements, now reaching an all-time low with the watch-thing – you have to see it to believe it. Also the exact story is a bit confusing, there are way too many villains, or at least it is not totally clear what their purpose is.

This then directly leads to the good parts of the movie: Bond gets an extremely nice introduction and redefinition. Most clich̩s are not played, it even takes to the very end to get the 'Bond, James Bond'-line and then finally also the Bond theme music. It is somewhat refreshing, that no fancy gadgets are used, all is done digitally (just plug in things into the mobile phone and you get what you need). But of course Q (and R) are beloved parts of the Bond universe and the gadgets make up an essential portion of the fun, so eventually Рin one of the following movies Рit would be nice for them to reappear.

Ah right, what is the story about? Catch the banker of the bad guys, who's hosting a poker tournament in Montenegro. Well. Cheesy, but who cares. The main purpose of this movie is to introduce Daniel Craig as Bond and in this it succeeds. I was somewhat skeptical about him, from pictures he just didn't seem to be a Bond. And he isn't a Brosnan clone. But he is a very good 21^st century Bond.

I am looking forward to the next movie, hopefully then with a title song that is worth mentioning.