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Casino Royale
by Holly Kirkwood
Made furious by the scandal surrounding other highly-paid journalists reviewing Casino Royale without seeing it, Holly Kirkwood unwillingly joins the masses on opening night to find out what all the fuss is about. And, yes, she says, Casino Royale is a safe bet.
- Rarely have I been so disappointed when a film came out as this one - but it's not with the movie I was disappointed with.
- Having seen Casino Royale I was only just bemoaning certain writers who can't even be bothered to quote the correct characters in their copy , when a Casino Royale scandal story appears on the media guardian talking about how half these chaps don't even attend the screenings. Well there's one journalist who'd be up for taking over Mr Vaughn's job, and you don't need to look much further then the venerable pages of Mookychick to find her.
- But on to the review. Not being a massive Bond geek, most of the outcry over everything from the colour of Mr Craig's hair to the rest of the nutty bollocks spewed out by the blogosphere passed straight over my head.
- But as the release date approached, the dearth of anything decent to see coupled with the extreme turnaround from doubting thomases to messiah-hailers of all who'd seen the result made me rather exited about Casino Royale.
- And, remarkably, the film lived up to the hype. Even though I was caught in what felt like the seventh circle of Hell in Leicester Square with 1,000 trolls - some of whom were actually so ugsome they were unable to turn their mobile phones off during the film - I had the time of my young life.
- Daniel Craig is simply the sexiest man on celluloid I've seen since Connery, and his obvious intelligence is a crucial element to making his Bond so much more of a watchable creature than previous incarnations. Relying on suavity and grace is a way of playing Bond we've seen countless times, but the actors who employed this technique – Moore, Dalton, Brosnan – were playing Bond, not acting. Anyone can turn a sideways glance into an innuendo with enough hairgel and tailoring. Well, OK, not anyone. Probably not a BBC Breakfast presenter, but you get the picture. Craig is something different.
- He makes Bond a man, not a caricature, which is the crucial element to his appeal. And the action is truly original and wonderfully thought-out. I venture that repeat viewings will only make it seem all the more spectacular, particularly because it doesn't rely on speedboats or underwater cars or famous backdrops to encourage jaw drops.
- It is also fabulous the way the film turns round the objectification of women onto Craig himself.
- Built up he is, but overmuscled he is not. We get more chances to see him in his swimming trunks than we see the women without clothes - which, to be honest, makes a very nice change. If my local pool had such viewing on offer I'd be there markedly more often. Fetishising Craig is the key to making Casino Royale so very different a Bond film, and the inspired casting (which absolutely nobody has argued with since seeing how Daniel Craig perform) makes a bold statement. Not many actors could have carried the weight of responsibility.
- And this does mean the girls slightly pale. Although feisty, Vesper Lynd (played by Eva Green) simply can't make us want to look at her the way that we want to look at Craig - but it seems fair to say that anyone would have had that problem.
- Of course the plot is utter twaddle, and the setting, in some post-9/11 world, sits uncomfortably with the chronology of the rest of the films, but who gives a toss when it's this good? High adrenalin, honest, genuine, sexy filmmaking characterises this a return to a form which manages to rise above the spoof-ridden franchise it had become.
- Hats off! I'm going to see it again next week.
About the author
Holly Kirkwood loves roaming the hills of her native Scotland in search of wolves and dragons - when she's not trying, and failing, to drink the regulars under the table in various foul pubs in London. Having set up her own cutting-edge politics magazine for young people, she is now based in a top-secret location, working as a punctuation anarchist.
Read Holly's articles:
Find out how Hol set up her own magazine
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