Thursday, 23 November 2006

A View To A Kill

My current dearth of activity is largely due to my linguistics project - just when it's near completion, it goes diachronic. A third holiday this year would boost the number of posts, but that's unlikely. Alternatively, I could go to the cinema more frequently.

In preserving "tradition", the Padre and I went to see Casino Royale. This tradition of seeing the new Bond film only stretches back to 31/12/99 when myself, the Padre, and my brother (2 unrelated people at the back were the only other viewers) saw The World is Not Enough. The Padre and I then saw Die Another Day on my birthday 4 years ago. DAD was the worst since Roger Moore's tenure, a recognition of the imaginary threat from Vin Diesel's zZz, and a poor end to the Brosnan era.

Spoilers Be Here...
Having had to endure 20 fucking minutes of adverts (including a number of online poker ads which suggested that such sites would lead to meeting bikini-clad women), I was only too happy for the film to start - but not before the obligatory "File-Sharing is killing cinema" announcement.

Visually, it immediately distinguishes itself from all prior outings - B&W, with plenty of Dutch Angles alluding to noir's realism. The bloat of a million explosions before the title sequence is gone - this is a minimalist intro. The flashback is a stark departure from the clean Medal of Honor style deaths. Bond's conversation during the intro had something of Dalton's Bond. All this combined in 10 minutes already makes it one of the best Bond films.

The title-sequence also broke with the usual custom: no naked silhouettes. The sequence bore heavy resemblance to a trailer for Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which may be part of a mutual appreciation as MGS3 was largely a tribute to 60's Bond.

The opening chase scene was very well choreographed and far more interesting than the standard car chase. Most viewers will not have known the group alluded to when Le Chiffre is introduced as the name was removed from the final script. I deduced it to be the Lord's Resistance Army through the scene's setting in Uganda and the dialogue over Le Chiffre's beliefs. This is nicely grounded in reality. Only four years ago did we have a mecha-genetically-engineered-North-Korean-turned-Caucasian villain.

I'm unsure why they chose to set the casino in Montenegro, rather than France as in the novel. Is it fashionable because it only just became independent this summer? Most of the exterior shots of Montenegro were filmed in Czechia. When I heard they were adapting Casino Royale, I had my doubts on whether a film about card-play would work at all.

It's a testament to the director's skill if someone such as I with a total lack of knowledge of poker could still feel the tension during the card scenes. Mathis explanations only helped to inform the viewers of how the game was progressing, but they were not necessary to get the feeling. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as the exposition in previous films - 'EMP. EMP? Yes, Electromagnetic Pulse. The Americans discovered it during a nuclear test in the 50s...'.

Judy Dench's continued portrayal of M confused me - CR is a reboot of the series, but she was in the past 4 films which have no continuity with this one. I got caught up for a while trying to figure-out if this meant 'Bond' was a codename ('Double-O agents don't have a long lifespan', spoken by Craig in a manner I interpreted as a reference to the previous Bonds) or whether we've to suspend belief in the character's changing face & the shifting timeline. I was actually happy to see John Cleese absent, as I don't think he fitted the space left by Desmond Llewelyn (nor did "Madonna" fit the space of an actor and a singer). I'd have been happy to see Zhukovsky back, though.

I'll be getting this on DVD, although it doesn't come out until next March, but you could always, *cough* you know... get it before then.

9/10 (a great film)

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