James Blonde

God's Holy Trousers but it's an awful tune. It lets the entire movie down: a shrieking, screaming, mullet-rock neck-snapper which made me think of 80's Chuck Norris movies and scenes involving shoot-outs at the docks. The problem persists throughout the movie. And it's not just that the score is filled with roaring brass sections but also because they seem to spring to life just when a new product has been placed on screen.

Gratuitous Product Placement

There's some grating product placement - in fact, it's stupidly obvious. Everytime a new one appears it gets a rousing blast of music. The bit with Bond driving a Mondeo so they could tie it in to an advertising campaign with Ford? Puke. God sake's, there's even a scene where Eva Green asks him what kind of watch he's wearing.

The fascination with James' Omega eluded me but thankfully there's a good villain on screen to distract you from noticing that Ian Fleming's most famous son has morphed into cabin staff.

The plot weaves around a bit aimlessly but they've been clever enough to let you see that there's a much larger story arc to come, whilst for the purposes of this movie we focus on on Bond himself.

'Balls. Bruised Balls.'

Eva Green plays the first believeable Bond Girl since Diana Rigg. Which made a refreshing change. However, I thought the story could have made more of the relationship with Felix Leiter (played by a suitably cool Jeffrey Wright), but I assume the plan is to develop it over the course of the next few movies. And perhaps it's that which sets 'Casino Royale' apart: it's the first Bond movie that's actually about Bond.

There's no moneypenny, no Q, no invisible cars, no 'oh James'. They've got rid of the fluff and hired a hard-man who can act. In fact Craig does such a good job of showing Bond up for the amoral bastard that he is, that there are moments when you begin to actively dislike him.

Bond Begins

When you look at how completely 'Batman Begins' rewrote the Batman story and made it fresh, you have to wonder why the Bond team didn't hire a more adventurous director. The success of 'Batman Begins' lay in the fact that Christopher Nolan brought a singular vision to a hackneyed franchise and made it breathe again. That same radical re-invention hasn't happened here.

Scorcese and Tarantino have both said they want to direct a Bond movie. So has Spielberg. Why can't a heavyweight direct a Bond movie? I can only conclude that this is because the Bond producers have a very rigid template and fear a strong director buggering the Golden Goose in a vain attempt to tell a story.

And that's the problem with Casino Royale. It's a re-invention that doesn't re-invent him enough. At moments it just seemed like they'd trimmed out the corny crap without achieving any of the grittiness of the much better Bourne movies.

No Monologuing

So here's hoping the second one sees Bond exchanging pleasantaries with Blofeld for the first time and a proper story propel the series on. And a slightly more creative director. But most of all, for God's sakes bring back John Barry and get some decent tunes in.

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Is this Ian Fleming's James Bond?

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