And Vesper, in a final act of sabotage, leaves Bond a valuable parting gift: the information required to track down the mysterious organization that orchestrated her doom in the first place, setting the stage for a new future for the 007 franchise. Bond learns about Vesper's plight before she dies, and despite his fury tries desperately to save her when she ends up trapped underwater.
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The film wisely complicates this nasty twist of the knife, giving both Bond and Vesper more agency in her tragic fate. Her death in the novel is a suicide she leaves a note explaining she was a double agent working for Russia all along, and killed herself when she realized her former employers would never leave her alone. As written by Fleming, Vesper is a little thin-an idealized femme fatale with an inner life we never learn very much about.
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But others-like Le Chiffre casually mocking villains who resort to "elaborate tortures" before beating Bond's exposed genitals with a rope, or the brilliant decision to withhold Monty Norman's immortal "James Bond Theme" until the closing credits-speak to the care with which every seemingly unquestionable aspect of 007 was considered in the effort to make him feel relevant again.Ĭasino Royale is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime movie you can only make with a franchise as old as this one.Īnd the adaptation didn't just modernize a novel that had been written more than 50 years earlier it improved it. Some moments lay it on a little thick-like when Bond snarls that he doesn't give a damn whether his martini is shaken or stirred. There was still plenty of action-including an all-time great chase sequence that saw Bond parkour-ing all over a construction site in pursuit of a suspect-but the tone was smarter and more elegiac, with a corker of an ending that never quite let you overlook the murkiness of Bond's ultimate victory.Ĭasino Royale is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime movie you can only make with a franchise as old as this one, because so much of the joy comes in how it riffs on our knowledge of everything that came before. This was not the James Bond audiences had grown accustomed to over the previous decades of movies. By the end of the story, Vesper is dead, and Bond has forced himself to believe he doesn't care: In a line pulled directly from the novel, he coldly shrugs, "the bitch is dead." Over the course of the mission, Bond reluctantly but helplessly falls in love with his ally, Vesper-and after defeating Le Chiffre (and surviving a grueling round of torture that pushes the PG-13 rating to its absolute limit), discovers that Vesper is a double agent who has been blackmailed into betraying him all along. If Bond wins, he'll have toppled a villain who might be persuaded to rat on more villains if he loses, the British government will have directly financed terrorism. The screenplay for Casino Royale follows the basic structure laid out by Fleming: James Bond is assigned to play cards against Le Chiffre-an international criminal whose bankroll is running low-in a high-stakes game at the Casino Royale.
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It's no coincidence that each of these actors has gone on to considerable success in film and TV in the decade since Casino Royale's release.
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His Bond-steely, precise, intelligent, and controlled, with a bitter, seething core that sometimes tips over into outright cruelty-channels the best of Fleming's work and brings it squarely into the 21st century.Ĭasino Royale's cast was filled out with a slew of up-and-coming talents: Eva Green as the guarded, alluring Vesper Lynd, played with such deft complexity that it should have put the catch-all term "Bond Girl" to bed for good Mads Mikkelsen as the chillingly amoral Le Chiffre, dripping sweat and blood as his arrogance spirals into self-destructiveness and Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter, Bond's laconic, soft-spoken CIA ally. Conventional wisdom holds that a successful performance in a blockbuster owes as much to stuntmen as it does to actors, but dismissing Craig's contributions would be doing a disservice to his extraordinary performance. But casting Craig ended up serving a dual purpose: It clearly severed Casino Royale from the movies that came before it, and ensured that an exceptionally talented actor would chart the course for Bond's future. In appearance and style, Craig was certainly an unconventional choice for the role also-rans like Goran Visnjic and Henry Cavill, with their dark, chiseled good looks, fit the typical concept of 007 much more neatly. Ian Fleming's original novel provided the basic framework: A short, grim story about a secret agent who neither saves the world nor gets the girl.