Tuesday, February 20, 2007

7 Dollar Popcorn Presents the 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Spectacular: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem Day 20: Casino Royale

Do you expect me to talk about a 20th movie for 7 Dollar Popcorn Presents the 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Spectacular: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem? No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!

Please, it's dreamrot. And I'm going to have to...die another day...because today's movie is James Bond 21, aka Casino Royale.

Casino Royale takes us backwards into the story of James Bond. His first mission.

In the opening teaser, Bond makes his first to kills, which enables him for promotion to Double-O status. From here he is sent to Madagascar to find a bomb maker. After a crazy ass chase through an embassy, Bond captures and kills the bombmaker and then blow up part of the embassy to make his escape. However, this gets him on the news, which in the spy biz is a big no no. M suspends him and he goes to the Bahamas. This puts him on the trail of Le Chiffre, who appeared on last weeks Battle of the Terrorist Banking Stars on ABC.

Ok, I might have made that up.

However, Le Chiffre is a bad bad man. He was going to make some money in the stock market by blowing up a prototype plane, but when Bond stopped that, Le Chiffre lost a shit ton of money for some really really bad men. In an attempt to get the money back, he enters into a high stakes poker game. And in an attempt to get to Le Chiffre, Bond enters too. Bond is bankrolled by the treasury, represented by Vesper Lynd.

At this point we're pretty much all together. Bond goes against Le Chiffre at the poker table, naturally winning only to be captured and tortured by Le Chiffre.

And this isn't even the end of the movie! The movie features a few twists and turns normally absent from your typical Bond movie. And you know what? Thats a good thing! Casino Royale is meant as a new beginning for Bond rather than a prequel. A kick start. The movie even has a neat parkour sequence reminiscent of District B13.

Eva Green as Vesper Lynd is great. The girl is HOT. I mean, DAMN. Mads Mikkelsen is great as the sickly villain Le Chiffre. And Daniel Craig is great as Bond. But...and there is a but...despite making a good Bond, he was the wrong choice I think. See, this is the start of Bond. This is Bond before everything that came after this. This is young impulsive cocky and brash Bond. Craig is almost 40, and he looks it. And it just makes Bond seem old, nearer to the end of his career than his start. A younger actor would have likely made for a better choice. I'm not saying that Bond should have been a kid either, just younger.

8 villains torturing you by hitting your balls with some sort of weight attached to a rope while you joke about how you made him scratch your balls out of 10.