'Casino Royale' revisited

With 'Quantum of Solace' due to hit our screens soon, we take a daily look back at the 21 official Bond films. Day 18: ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’

Casino Royale (2006, Martin Campbell)

Villain: Mads Mikkelsen as ‘Le Chiffre’
At stake: Nebulous high-finance shenanigans
Candy: Eva Green as Vesper Lynd
Gizmo: Glove-box defibrillator
Theme song: Turgid grunge anthem ‘You Know My Name’ by Chris Cornell
Quote: ‘Now the whole world’s going to know you died scratching my balls!’

There’s so much right with blue-eyed buff thug Daniel Craig’s first run at Bond that it seems churlish to pick nasty little holes, but he applies himself to a film that’s so unquestionably hampered by a single crucial flaw, that an otherwise entirely successful re-invention of the franchise is left pissing in the wind.

This is certainly nothing to do with Craig himself, who excels as the ‘blunt instrument’ of MI6 that this new take on Fleming’s world requires him to be. Nor is it ‘GoldenEye’ veteran Martin Campbell’s uncluttered direction or any lack of general exuberance or stylistic wherewithal. Rather, the problem lies with the poor choice of story into which all this excellent work is invested.

The fact that the two previous incarnations of ‘CR’ – in the form of a bowdlerised 1954 American TV segment and an overblown spoof starring Orson Welles and Bernard Cribbins – should have perhaps hinted that it was a property lacking in sufficient blockbuster potential. It forces 007 to spend an inordinate amount of time playing cards, before subjecting him to a torture sequence in which he is clumped repeatedly in the swingers with a length of knotted rope, then subsequently sequestered to a protracted stay in the kind of hospital usually reserved for the terminally confused.

Despite this, the action is first-rate, with even an initially off-putting free-running sequence somehow coming up trumps and a seriously unruly rumpus on the tarmac of Miami International Airport lending an air of contemporary paranoia to the march of events.

The same can’t be said of a climactic set-to that takes place in a collapsing Venice townhouse that creaks and groans into the Grand Canal with the authenticity of a hydraulically rigged attraction on the Universal Studios tour. Swiss pedant Marc Forster has gone in to action overdrive with the soon-to-be-released 22nd Bond instalment, ‘Quantum of Solace’, so maybe we'll just have to wait for the 23rd installment (our predicted title: 'Along Came Auntie') for a dose of old-fashioned storytelling.

James Bond will return in 'Quantum of Solace'

Read what we originally thought of 'Casino Royale'

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