CASINO ROYALE

There are remakes, and then there are remakes. Casino Royale is officially a remake, insofar as a James Bond film with that title came out in 1967 - but that was a (mostly unfunny) spoof, whereas this is the opposite. In fact it’s the most sober, non-spoofy Bond … probably ever, certainly since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1970) which came with a similarly heretical plot twist: Bond in love.

That’s right folks, James Bond gets all gooey in Casino Royale - though you know it has to end badly because this is the ‘origin myth’, a prequel of sorts to the other Bonds (Royale was also the first Ian Fleming book, the one that introduced his suave secret agent). The film is hyped as a radical departure for the series whereas all they’ve really done is applied the Spider-Man template, adding emotional heft to a cartoon-like superhero. Gadgets have been replaced by psychology. John Cleese as ‘Q’ is conspicuous by his absence. When an Aston Martin briefly appears, it belongs - oh, the irony! - to one of the minor villains, not 007.

None of this is really controversial; Batman and Superman have also undergone this kind of detox in recent years, purging themselves of campy frivolity - though admittedly Pierce Brosnan was affable (and popular) as the previous Bond, and the series’ decline was gentle rather than terminal. A lot of nonsense has been talked about Daniel Craig, the new 007. Militant Bond fans claimed he was too short, too blond, too ugly; now the film’s come out and critics claim he’s more thuggish, more ‘realistic’, more true to Fleming’s concept of the character. In fact Craig’s main contribution is to smoulder - which he does well - and project a mix of reserve and aloofness, his Bond being “emotionally detached”. He’s a different beast both to Brosnan’s smooth public-schoolboy and Fleming’s jaded bon viveur; which of the three is most ‘realistic’ is impossible to say, unless you’re an MI5 agent with licence to kill.

Casino Royale starts as it means to go on, with a fight scene in grainy black-and-white and newly-promoted Bond carrying out the two assassinations needed to seal his ‘00’ status; even the opening credits - preceded by the trademark shooting-at-the-camera-and-curtain-of-blood effect - unfold to the strains of a grungy rock song (by Chris Cornell of Soundgarden fame) instead of the usual power-ballad. The film spends a lot of time trying to describe its hero. ‘M” (Judi Dench) thinks he’s a “blunt instrument”; the villain’s moll, whom he uses and seduces, murmurs he’s a “bad man” in between sighs of pleasure; terms like “maladjusted”, “arrogant” and “cold-hearted bastard” also get tossed around. Reading his mind as a form of foreplay, the girl (Eva Green) reckons he’s an orphan with a chip on his shoulder, who wears his expensive suits with disdain and hates his masters as much as his enemies. He doesn’t deny it.

This is all good stuff; Bond is back, and he’s actually a character - as opposed to window-dressing - for the first time in decades. The film itself has problems, though, mostly in being far too long (Superman Returns had the same problem) - and the way it’s structured makes it seem even longer.

It’s odd that Royale is co-written by Paul Haggis - the writer of Crash, where parallel plot strands advanced simultaneously - because this is structured in blocks, moving from one thing to another. The first hour or so limns Bond’s mission to track down ‘Le Chiffre’ (asthmatic and villainous, with a tendency to weep tears of blood when stressed) and foil a sabotage attempt on an airplane prototype; this is the most action-packed section, including a terrific chase with bits of the perpetual-motion fight style known as parkour. Then - and only then - comes the first appearance of Ms. Green, accompanying our hero to a high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. Then the game itself, shown in detail albeit dumbed-down for non-aficionados. Then an extended torture scene, not entirely necessary except to emphasise the new, hardcore 007 (Casino Royale is easily the most violent Bond film, and the first where he gets covered in blood after killing people). Then, finally, the playing-out of Bond’s emotional arc, and the sad resolution of his true romance which - it’s implied - left a trauma in the years to come.

It works scene by scene but it drags as a whole, as though the film has to rouse itself for each new development. Le Chiffre isn’t really an antagonist in the way Blofeld and Goldfinger were - he and Bond are enemies but it’s business, nothing personal - so the torture doesn’t feel like a showdown (just a set-piece, ‘The Torture Scene’). The girl only comes into her own in the last half-hour, so the ending doesn’t feel like a catharsis for something that’s been building up throughout the movie. In short, Casino Royale doesn’t really work as drama. Still, the mere fact that we're asking if it ‘works as drama’ marks this out as a new kind of Bond film. Bond is back, and at least he’s different.