Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 21: Casino Royale

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few weeks, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is the twenty-first entry, with a full review of arguably the best film in the franchise, in terms of pure objective quality, Casino Royale. I hope you enjoy what is a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it. But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should. Without further ado...

Casino Royale

2006

Director:  Martin Campbell

Starring:  Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini

Rated PG-13

Now the whole world's gonna know that you died scratching my balls!

                        ~James Bond

STATS

Kills: 12

Bond Girls:  Vesper Lynd, Solange Dimitrios

Car:  Bond wins an Aston Martin, but the mission gives him an Aston Martin DBS V12

Locales:  Madagascar, Bahamas, Montenegro, Venice

Odd Villain Trait:  Le Chiffre has a scar on his eye and weeps blood from it

Song:  “You Know My Name” pefromed by Chris Cornell

Casino Royale is an absolute masterpiece in the 007 series.  The film is top notch big budget entertainment and one of the best reboot films ever created.  One could argue that this isn’t the first time the series has been rebooted.  Every time a new 007 take the role, it could essentially serve as a new start to the series (minus On Her Majesty’s Secret Service).  Following the ridiculousness of Die Another Day, Eon decided to rid itself of that era and start anew, grounding James Bond and focusing on physical effects and stunts.  What hasn’t been said about this movie already?

The forgotten classic among 007 theme songs...

I've generally stayed out of the James Bond waters of late for pretty obvious reasons.  But as a result of Adele's Skyfall being released, I went back and listened to the previous 007 theme songs, paying extra attention to the post-GoldenEye tunes that I have perhaps only listened to once or twice.  First of all, I take back every vaguely defensive thing I ever said about Madonna's "Die Another Day".  The tuneless, joyless disco chore is every bit as awful as the pundits claimed ten years ago, so mea culpa.  But the next one on the list was Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name" from Casino Royale.  I had only heard the song perhaps once, when I saw the film in theaters six years ago (confession: when I watch the 007 films at home, I usually skip the credit sequences as they do nothing for me and of course are completely disconnected to the  narrative).  So imagine my surprise as I discovered, six years late perhaps, what a rather terrific and catchy kick-ass rock tune Cornell's ditty actually is.  It's firmly in the vein of hard-rock "being a spy is *hard!* tunes from The Living Daylights and A View To A Kill (and arguably Live and Let Die).  It's also the catchiest tune since Duran Duran's "Dance Into the Fire" and stands alongside that camp classic as one of the best pure rock-n-roll songs in the Bond universe.  Anyway, if you haven't listened to it in awhile, sample above.  And consider this a second mea culpa, for not realizing how good this theme was all those years.

Scott Mendelson