Casino

This weekend we have a double update thing with not one but two film reviews! Yesterday I journeyed down to Bristol to see Casino Royale & Borat, supposed to be two of this years best films in their respective area of cinematography.

Casino Royale

Before I say anything about the latest Bond, let me go back a few years and make a comment on Die Another Day. I fucking hate that film. It is an utter pile of balls. You’ve got a henchman with diamonds in his face – top marks for realism there – and a guy who starts off North Korean and then suddenly becomes a Swedish banker or some shit. After 30 minutes I removed my toilet paper roll and replaced it with the Die Another Day DVD.

When Daniel Craig first got the role for Bond, everyone insulted him and said that he really wasn’t going to be very good. Having seen him in Archangel on BBC – the best thriller I have ever read – I thought he was going to be quite good. And – guess what? I was right. Didn’t see that one coming.

Casino Royale is the very first Bond film of the series, originally made in some godforsaken form where Bond dies and goes to hell. Luckily, this film actually makes an iota of sense. Bond is sent to play poker and rob a terrorist banker of his cash. Before this however, we have a black-and-white flashback about how Bond acquired his 00 status – “You need two kills to be a double-oh.”

Anyway, the opening action scene is a chase through a building site somewhere in Madagascar. It was an exciting first scene – one of the better Bond opening scenes – and quite realistic too. Bond was unable to do some of the things the man he was pursuing could, and actually got injured through-out the chase. There are numerous entertaining moments as well during this chase, showing that Bond isn’t completely humourless. It was certainly more entertaining than that bit on Die Another Day where the Korean-Swedish Balloonist electrocutes his father with his power suit. That sucked.

Strangely, I found the long poker scene to be one of the best. Anyone who understands poker will get a lot more out of it than those deprived individuals who don’t, if only because you find yourself trying to second-guess the players, especially in the final hand. The plot is also far more complex and intertwining than previous films with far more twists and turns than your normal Bond.

My only real complaint was the final third – you were never sure when the film was going to end. It seemed like maybe half a dozen potential endings strung together one after the other. This wasn’t especially bad, but it made things odd – not so much suspense but repeated surprise that the credits aren’t yet rolling. Even in this final third, there are more twists and turns than the rest of the film, and by the end I wasn’t even sure Bond was on his side.

The last point to mention – Fleming appears to have tried to make Le Chiffre as bizarre as possible. In addition to having greasy hair and mismatching pupils, he bleeds. From his eyes. In conclusion, it’s a good return to form, a nice change from the Bond who never does anything wrong, it sets up the next film to be even better, has a satisfying final line and has a good amount of character development - rarely seen before in Bonds and welcome here.

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Depending on the results of the hit-counter, we’re thinking of moving to an actual domain. This would give us far more control over our content, it’ll have far fewer fuck-ups than incompetent blogger and will let different people contribute more. Lastly, I think that people will generally be more inclined to visit a website than a blog – it suggests a greater guarantee of matieral.

Anyway, we’re currently looking at www.t-r-i.co.uk, but I’d like anyone else to suggest domain names.

The second film review – Borat : Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan – comes later today.