The James Bond franchise is restarted with a new James Bond on his first mission as a double-0 agent, in a story adapted from Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel.
The Plot: (Spoilers)
In Prague, Czech Republic, an MI6 Section Chief (Malcolm Sinclair), suspected of selling state secrets, arrives at his office in the middle of the night. MI6 agent James Bond (Daniel Craig), not yet a double-0 as he has no kills and needs two, is waiting for him. The Section Chief pulls a gun from his desk to shoot Bond, but the gun is empty as Bond had already found it. Bond reveals he's already killed the section chief's contact; a flashback shows them fighting in a bathroom and Bond drowning him in a sink. The section chief starts to say that the second kill is easier, but Bond shoots him mid-sentence. "Yes. Considerably." Flashing back to the bathroom, the contact wasn't killed by the drowning and recovers to pull a gun on Bond, but Bond is quicker, shooting him first in the famous gunbarrel opening, leading to the opening credits featuring "You Know My Name" by Chris Cornell. The opening credits show that Bond is promoted to 00-status.
The Plot: (Spoilers)
In Prague, Czech Republic, an MI6 Section Chief (Malcolm Sinclair), suspected of selling state secrets, arrives at his office in the middle of the night. MI6 agent James Bond (Daniel Craig), not yet a double-0 as he has no kills and needs two, is waiting for him. The Section Chief pulls a gun from his desk to shoot Bond, but the gun is empty as Bond had already found it. Bond reveals he's already killed the section chief's contact; a flashback shows them fighting in a bathroom and Bond drowning him in a sink. The section chief starts to say that the second kill is easier, but Bond shoots him mid-sentence. "Yes. Considerably." Flashing back to the bathroom, the contact wasn't killed by the drowning and recovers to pull a gun on Bond, but Bond is quicker, shooting him first in the famous gunbarrel opening, leading to the opening credits featuring "You Know My Name" by Chris Cornell. The opening credits show that Bond is promoted to 00-status.
A new variation on a famous opening
In Mbale, Uganda, a man named Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) is meeting with the leader of a group of “freedom fighters,” waiting for someone else to arrive. The leader asks how he knows he can trust the man they are waiting for with his money, and Mr. White says his organization only guarantees the introduction. The man, Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), arrives and they make the deal. Le Chiffre calls his broker and shorts another million shares of Skyfleet stock, despite the broker’s warning that he’s going against the market.
Mr. White watches as Le Chiffre makes a deal
In Madagascar, Bond and another agent named Carter (Joseph Millson) are watching a bombmaker (Sébastien Foucan). The bombmaker receives a text message, and then sees Carter touching his earpiece. This tips off the bombmaker that he’s being watched and he starts running. Bond chases him on an extended footrace through a construction site and ultimately to the Nambutu Embassy, where Bond ends up killing the bombmaker, setting off a large explosion and escaping with the bombmaker’s backpack, in which he finds the cellphone and checks the text message, which reads simply “ELLIPSIS.”
On a yacht, Le Chiffre is shown the news of the incident in Madagascar. He asks how long until Ellipsis expires and is told 36 hours and he says that's all the time they have anyway.
In London, M (Judi Dench) has had to answer to Parliament for Bond's actions in Madagascar. Meanwhile, Bond has broken into M's home and uses her computer to determine where the Ellipsis text message was sent from, which was the Ocean Club on Paradise Island in Nassau in the Bahamas. M comes home to find Bond there, and she orders him to get out of sight and think about his future.
Bond goes to the Ocean Club and reviews the club’s surveillance tapes and finds that the message was sent by the driver of a silver 1964 Aston Martin DB-5. He asks the front desk about it and learns the owner is Mr. Dimitrios (Simon Abkarian), who lives up the beach. Bond gets a room at the hotel. Bond wins the car from Dimitrios in a poker game and uses it to meet his wife (Caterina Murino), who he invites back to his room, while Dimitrios meets with Le Chiffre on his yacht. Dimitrios connected Le Chiffe to the bombmaker in Madagascar, and says he has another man who can do the job. Dimitrios calls his wife and tells her he is flying to Miami; she reveals this to Bond and he follows.
A Classic
In Miami, Dimitrios is leaving a bag check tag for his contact, when he sees Bond following him and tries to kill him, but Bond kills Dimitrios instead, and follows Dimitrios's contact (Claudio Santamaria) back to the Miami airport. After losing the suspect behind a locked door, Bond calls MI6 to report that he suspects a bombing, then suddenly realizes that “Ellipsis” is the code to unlock the door. MI6 determines that the target is the new prototype for Skyfleet's new S570 airliner: the largest ever built. After a fuel truck chase on the tarmac, Bond keeps the Skyfleet prototype from being destroyed, and Le Chiffre loses $101,206,000, which he got from the Ugandan freedom fighters.
Back in the Bahamas, MI6 discovers Dimitrios's wife has been tortured and murdered and that Le Chiffre has set up a high-stakes hold-‘em poker tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro to win back the money he lost shorting the Skyfleet stock; had their prototype been destroyed the stock would’ve crashed and Le Chiffre would’ve made a lot of money. Bond is the best player MI6 has, so he is being put in the tournament in place of a crime syndicate member. If Bond wins, Le Chiffre will have nowhere to turn and will have to accept a deal for protection from MI6 in exchange for revealing his contacts.
On the way to Montenegro by train, Bond meets Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), who was sent by the Treasury to monitor Bond and the $10 million he needs to enter the tournament, and authorize an additional $5 million if she thinks it’s a good idea. The two trade barbs over dinner, with both making accurate deductions about the other.
In Montenegro, they check into the hotel, and Bond finds that M has had a new Aston-Martin DBS delivered for him, which includes emergency medical supplies including a portable defibrillator and a gun and silencer, which Bond puts it in an envelope and leaves at the casino’s front desk.
Bond checks out his new ride
Bond and Lynd meet their local contact Rene Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini), who informs him that Le Chiffre is bribing the police chief of police, but he has delivered faked evidence implicating the chief that gets the chief arrested.
Bond, Lynd and Mathis
The poker tournament gets started, and Bond meets Le Chiffre. Bond soon discovers that Le Chiffre has a tell. Mathis delivers a bug, and at the next break they hide it in Le Chiffre's inhaler. Le Chiffre goes to his hotel room, where the Ugandans are waiting for him. Bond is listening over the bug, and is concerned the Ugandans might kill Le Chiffre, so he fetches his gun from the front desk and he and Lynd wait outside Le Chiffre’s room. Le Chiffre promises the Ugandans that he'll have their money the next day, and they leave. Bond and Lynd pretend to be lovers making out in the corridor, but the Ugandan’s spot Bond’s earpiece. They fight down the stairwell and Bond kills the Ugandans. He tells Lynd to have Mathis hide the bodies.
Bond meets Le Chiffre
In the game, Bond sees Le Chiffre's tell again and Le Chiffre goes all in. Bond has a full house and calls, going all in himself, but Le Chiffre actually has 4 of a kind; his tell was fake, to trick Bond. Bond needs the $5 million buy in to stay in the game, but Vesper refuses, thinking Bond will just lose that too. Bond decides to kill Le Chiffre, but another player introduces himself as a CIA agent named Felix Lieter (Jeffrey Wright). Lieter thinks Bond has a better chance of winning than he does, so he offers to cover the $5 million for Bond if Bond agrees to let the CIA make the arrest. Bond agrees.
Bond contemplates his loss
Bond wins back a lot of money. Le Chiffre arranges to have one of Bond's drinks poisoned, inducing a heart attack. Bond manages to make to his car and its medical supplies and with help from MI6 and Lynd uses its defibrillator to restart his heart, and he returns to the game.
The game is down to four players. The other two players go all in, Le Chiffre raises, and Bond goes all in, forcing Le Chiffre to go all in to call, which he does. The other two players have a flush and a full house with 8s and aces. Le Chiffre reveals his hand: a full house with aces and 6s. He is sure he has won, until Bond reveals he has a straight flush. Bond wins the tournament and Le Chiffre leaves angrily. Bond tells Lieter he is free to take Le Chiffre.
Bond tells Lieter he can take Le Chiffre
Bond and Lynd have dinner, and a told that the CIA has made contact with Le Chiffre. Lynd receives a message that Mathis needs to see her and she leaves. Bond suddenly realizes Mathis might have been involved and chases after her, just in time to see her grabbed and put in a car. He chases in his car, only to come across her tied up in the road. Bond swerves and crashes. Le Chiffre and his men pull him from the car and Le Chiffre says "I'm afraid your friend Mathis is really my friend Mathis."
Be careful on those slippery roads
Bond is taken to a dark building and tied up. As Lynd can be heard screaming in another room, Le Chiffre tortures Bond for the password to the bank account. Suddenly, Mr. White arrives. Le Chiffre says he'll get the money, but Mr. White says that money is not as important to his organization as knowing who to trust, and kills Le Chiffre, leaving Bond and Lynd alive.
Bond and Lynd recuperate at a hospital and Bond has Mathis arrested. Mendel (Ludger Pistor) the Swiss banker arrives for the account number and password to transfer the money. Lynd enters the account number and Bond gives her the password (Vesper) and the money is transferred.
Bond and Lynd realize they've fallen in love. Bond admits to her he realized Mathis must have told Le Chiffre that he noticed the tell and that's how Le Chiffre was able to trick him. Lynd asks if everyone has a tell, and Bond says everyone does except her. They sail to Venice and Bond sends M his resignation.
Lynd and Bond get closer
The next morning, Lynd is off to the bank while Bond is to get supplies for their travels, but M calls and asks what happened to the money from the tournament. Bond calls the banker, who says that the money was transferred and is being withdrawn from the account as they speak… at the Venice branch.
Bond finds Lynd leaving the bank with a briefcase and follows her to where she hands over the briefcase to two men. They spot Bond, and take Lynd with them into a building under renovation, where they lock Lynd in an old caged elevator, while snipers shoot at Bond from above. Bond shoots some of the inflatable pontoons holding up the building as a diversion as he gets in, and the old building starts to collapse and sink. Bond fights the men and kills them all. In the process, the briefcase is dropped into the water and floats away. As Bond tries to unlock the elevator's outer gate, Lynd locks the inner gate, and the elevator falls and sinks. Underwater, Bond can't get into the elevator before Lynd drowns. He pulls her out and gets her to the roof of the sunken building, but it is too late and he can't revive her. Mr. White watches from a nearby building, and walks away carrying the briefcase.
Bond reports to M, who has learned that Lynd had a boyfriend who was kidnapped and held to force Lynd to help them get the money. M suggests that this clears Mathis, but Bond thinks it could've been a double-blind. MI6 is out of leads, but Bond finds Mr. White's number in Lynd's cellphone.
Mr. White arrives home and gets a call on his cell phone. He answers and Bond's voice tells him they need to talk. White asks who it is, and is shot in the knee. White drags himself to his porch and Bond walks up, carrying an automatic rifle and a phone. "The name's Bond. James Bond."
"The name's Bond. James Bond"
My Review:
Casino Royale reboots the James Bond franchise, keeping the best aspects like exotic locations, cool cars and beautiful women and toning down the more ridiculous ones like gadgets and villains’ gimmicks and it works! Despite a running time of 144 minutes, the film has a tight plot and is action packed, even with a poker game taking up a lot of time. The only slow part comes when Bond is recuperating with Lynd in the hospital and they fall in love. This could have used some trimming. Otherwise, the action and poker game scenes are well done, especially the opening chase through the construction site in Madagascar with Bond and the bombmaker, and the impressive car crash. The casting is very good. Daniel Craig is perhaps the best James Bond ever. Eva Green is good as Vesper Lynd, though I didn’t quite feel the romance between her and Craig’s Bond, their earlier scenes when they were antagonistic towards each other are excellent. Unlike many Bond villains of the past, the villains here are understated without much dialogue. It isn’t until the torture scene that Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre really gives the actor a chance to show his abilities, but its enough to show Mikkelsen’s talent. The other rest of the cast does a good job as well, including Judi Dench returning as M, despite this being a reboot. Dench gives M a slightly different twist here than in the Pierce Brosnan films, showing her distrust of the young and inexperienced Bond.
Overall, Casino Royale is a fun James Bond adventure that shows the origins of a new James Bond and sets a new direction for one of the greatest movie franchises.
