Casino Royale (Deluxe Edition)
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Released:20/10/2008
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Studio:Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Director:Martin Campbell
Amazon.co.uk Review
The most successful invigoration of a cinematic franchise since Batman Begins, Casino Royale offers a new Bond identity. Based on the Ian Fleming novel that introduced Agent 007 into a Cold War world, Casino Royale is the most brutal and viscerally exciting James Bond film since Sean Connery left Her Majesty's Secret Service. Meet the new Bond; not the same as the old Bond. Daniel Craig gives a galvanising performance as the freshly minted double-0 agent. Suave, yes, but also a "blunt instrument," reckless and possessed with an ego that compromises his judgment during his first mission to root out the mastermind behind an operation that funds international terrorists. In classic Bond film tradition, his global itinerary takes him to far-flung locales, including Uganda, Madagascar, the Bahamas (that's more like it) and Montenegro, where he is pitted against his nemesis in a poker game, with hundreds of millions in the pot. The stakes get even higher when Bond lets down his armour by falling in love with Vesper (Eva Green), the ravishing banker's representative fronting him the money.
For longtime fans of the franchise, Casino Royale offers some retro kicks. Bond wins his iconic Aston Martin at the gaming table, and when a bartender asks if he wants his martini "shaken or stirred," he disdainfully replies, "Do I look like I give a damn?". There's no Moneypenny or "Q," but Dame Judi Dench is back as the exasperated M who, one senses, admires Bond's "bloody cheek." A Bond film is only as good as its villain, and Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre, who weeps blood, is a sinister dandy. From its punishing violence and virtuoso action sequences to its romance, Casino Royale is a Bond film that, in the words of one character, 'makes you feel it', particularly during an excruciating torture sequence. Double-0s, Bond observes early on, "have a short life expectancy". But with Craig, there is new life in the old franchise yet, as well as genuine anticipation for the next one when, at last, the signature James Bond theme kicks in following the best last line ever in any Bond film. To quote Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin, "now I know what I've been faking all these years". --Donald Liebenson
Tags
James Bond, Action & Adventure, Drama
Reviews
Right, unless you've lived on Mars for the past two years you will already know what an excellent film we have here, so there should be no need to go through the plot details, instead onto a review of the DVD itself.
I have to say this really is the DVD version we should have had two years ago. Presented in a cracking thick cardboard slipcase, and opening out with into a tryptich digipak, disc one on the left, two and three on the right and in the middle a glossy booklet in a slip pocket. Each outside surface features a cracking picture, Bond, Vesper and Bond & Vesper, all beautifully reproduced in a lovely matt finish. Excellent packaging.
First off, the menus. Thankfully they have been re-done as the original release had possibly the worst menus ever seen (almost! - well, certainly to grace Bond DVDs), these now feature a deck of cards tumbling toward the viewer, with the Casino Royale logo on back, (following the style of Daniel Klienman's most excellent titles, probably the best of the whole series) I think it is a shame they didn't follow the format of the Ultimate Edition DVDs but a welcome update anyway.
Disc One, is as previous issue - except for two commentaries - the first features director Martin Campbell and co-producer Michael Wilson, the second by the crew.
Disc Two is a straight lift from the previous release, featuring, Becoming Bond, James Bond for Real, Bond Girls Forever and Chris Cornelle's video for 'You Know My Name' - a theme tune that is definitely a grower.
Disc Three - this is where it gets interesting! A shed-load of features and featurettes, dealing with Casino Royale, from book to small screen, to big screen spoof and onto the excellent film we have here. It's all kicked off with a half-dozen or so deleted scenes, the best being the post-torture rush to hospital and recovery, but a nice collection all together.
There are featurettes on Ian Fleming and his incredible creation, Paradise Island which has a long history with both Fleming and James Bond, there are explorations into the filmmaking process, showcasing the Venice finale, the Freerun chase and the Miami airport thrill ride! Profiles and storyboards. All-in-all an exhaustive collection covering just about everything you would want to know about the 21st James Bond film.
If you don't own Casino Royale, buy this version, if you do own Casino Royale, drop it into your local charity shop and buy this version.
And once you gone through the excellent extras, slip in Disc One and reacquaint yourself with this excellent and, dare I say, classic piece of Bond that this film is. The series was due for a re-boot after the dire Die Another Day and what better way to do it - back to the beginning!
This 3 disc set is packaged in the thickest card and has a velvet covering. A really well produced package, with a sumptuous booklet too.
The first disk has a new commentary which is insightful and entertaining.
The second disc is as it was on the 2 disc version.
The extras on the third disc are all new and go into great detail and are very much worth viewing.
All in all, a superb set... I hope they do the same for Quantum of Solace.
At last, a James Bond that is not full of ridiculous gadgets and women changing sides after sleeping with the enemy.
The idea of beginning the Bond stories all over again is inspired.After all other works have been repeated ad nauseum eg. Pride and Predjudice,the Tudors (yawn) et al. The difference with this production is a greater realism, Bond actually gets cuts and bruises and needs hospitalisation.
The extras in this edition are excellent and I would recommend it to anyone, great value.
As one of the only 12 people who was genuinely delighted at Daniel Craig's casting when it was announced , I must admit I was more than a little worried about Casino Royale. Not the kind of paranoia that those newcomers who'd never experience the changing of the guard the series goes through every decade or the staggeringly venomous hate-mongering of the more fanatical Brosnan fans who felt compelled to start libellous hate-sites, though. After all those months of arguing that he was the perfect choice for the role (especially after some of the more moronic suggestions), was I setting myself up for a fall if he turned in a disappointing performance? Similarly there was the film itself. While the producers were making all the right noises about going back to basics, they'd done exactly the same with Licence To Kill and chickened out to deliver a sub-Roger Moore effort with Wayne Newton as a comedy relief villain, inept ninjas, pointless gadgets, laughable violence and monster truck stunts. Too often in the past the franchise had been over-reliant on the goodwill generated by the earlier films, rehashing earlier vehicles to decreasing returns secure in the knowledge that the audience would turn up anyway. Take away the Bond brand, and too many post-OHMSS entries simply wouldn't have stood up to scrutiny in the marketplace on their own merits: Bond had become a tradition, a ritual like going home for the holidays that you knew was never going to be as good as it was when you were a kid but which you still went through out of a mixture of hope and obligation.
I needn't have worried. Not only is it the best Bond film in 37 years, it's as if the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan years never happened. After Brosnan's surprisingly lazy and slightly seedy turn in DAD, Craig delivers the most physical Bond since Lazenby, but this time matched by the acting chops to make the most of the best script the series has had in decades - at once plot and character led - as the rookie blunt instrument bulldozes his way through his mission until emotional awakening and betrayal starts to finesse him into the Bond we knew from the Connery days. Brosnan never could have delivered this kind of performance, either physically or emotionally, and, truth be told, neither could Connery in his prime: Craig is the first one to convince you that he's not a movie star or an actor but that he really IS James Bond.
The updating of the plot from the Cold War era to a post 9/11 world works surprisingly well, with the first act managing to provide a convincing motive for the high stakes poker game centrepiece while also providing a couple of superb action scenes that don't become too absurd and serve the plot in a series where in the past the plot was too often an excuse for the action. The much-criticised change from baccarat to poker is a smart one too. Where Baccarat is purely a game of luck (as Fleming himself found out when he went bust in three hands trying out the novel's premise on a Nazi spy), poker actually involves both strategy and psychology, making for more satisfying drama and tension.
There is, sadly, one concession to gadgetry that veers into the absurd - c'mon, who keeps a defibrillator in their glove compartment? - and is an unwelcome reminder of the days when old Roge would get out of a scrape with his buzz saw wristwatch or his projectile dart cufflinks thanks to lazy writing, but elsewhere it settles for using existing technology (most of it manufactured by Sony for some reason that escapes me) rather than veering into total fantasy. And it's good to see a Bond who needs hospitalisation after the villain goes Quasimodo on his nuts with a bell rope. The film's final sequence promises one helluva follow-up, and one can only hope the producers don't lose their nerve and throw it all away the way they did with Diamonds Are Forever. The real James Bond is indeed back.
While the 2-disc DVD was a disappointment by the standards of the previous EON entries, this three-disc deluxe edition goes some way to making up for it, though it's annoying to have to double-dip when many of these features were ready to go more than a year ago. Aside from redesigned menus, the only additions to the first disc are the two audio commentaries, with the second disc the same as the two disc edition - three puff pieces from the film's theatrical release and an updated version of the Bond Girls Are Forever documentary. For significant new features, you need to go to the third disc - a number of new featurettes, storyboard comparisons and deleted scenes. There are still ommissions (where are the trailers?, but it's not a bad hand, especially if you're a first-time buyer.
Bags of action from opening sequence. Still amazed at the technology that seems to show a Venetian building slowly sinking into the lagoon.
