We rented this the other night. I expected the worst. Bond had degraded from an absolute-must-watch to.....eh, who cares really? Timothy Dalton mortally wounded the franchise and Pearce Brosnan unplugged the life support. I realize it's unfair to exclusively blame the two actors...the stories and overall approach were tired. To be fair, I actually like the first Pearse as Bond flick. But that last one with Halle Barry...OMG!So I had very low expectations when Casino Royale showed up. The Peter Sellers version was and still is one of my all time favorite movies. And I had heard that the opening "big stunt" had been replaced by a B&W flashback kind of sequence. Trouble was brewing. And it started even worse. We're watching this on our TV and it's hot (being summer and all), so we have all of our fans running, the windows open...and we can't hear a thing. Not to sound like my dad, but we couldn't understand what they were saying because of their bloody accents. DVD Subtitles to the rescue and things rapidly improved. Improved to the point that I'm ready to declare this movie a winner.
I really liked Daniel Craig as Bond. I thought he'd be more of a cold and calculated killer (which he is) but he's slightly simpathetic. It seemed like all of this was bugging him. And when he fought (which they filmed fantastically), he got hurt big time. And when they tortued him, they were, ahem, following the books lead, let's just say. (The torture scene is directly from the original book...). But Bond get's tortured! Not strapped to a silver table with a laser beam slowly moving to cut him in half while the villian monologues...but seriously tortured. I'm no sadist, but this is good stuff. And it was light on the overt sexual stuff. I still am watching this with Kristie and the girls, and I'm not cool with the "nail everything that moves" type of Bond movie...this was definitely not that. Great action sequences, pretty good story. Yep, that's a heck of a Bond movie.
Last year we rented Live and Let Die. Historically, this was always my favorite Bond movie. Never saw it in a theater, it was always the NBC Saturday Night at the Movies or something. I remember loving this movie in high school and college. But sitting down and watching it with just the girls....it was really pretty slow. Took quite a while to get anything going, like an hour before anything big happened. Casino Royale has figured this out and starts out rockin' and just keeps moving along.