Bond, James Bond

I saw Casino Royale last night. It was a fairly entertaining way to pass a few hours on a Saturday night. I'm just not sure it was a Bond film.

I mean, obviously it was a Bond film, in that it was a film about James Bond, but that's the thing. Most Bond films so far haven't been about James Bond. They've been about evil villains with schemes to take over the planet. They've been about meeting (and doing other things with) exotic women in exotic locations. They've been about gadgets and cool cars (lets forget the invisible car in Die Another Day, shall we?). They've been about effortless cool and suave sophistication. And that's why Casino Royale isn't really a bond film.

So what was good about it? Locations (although using some of the same locations as Star Wars: Attack of the Clones was a mistake), chases (even though the crane climbing chase was utterly unbelievable, even for a Bond film), Daniel Craig (good actor, still not convinced he's right for the part, but can't fault him for trying), Eva Green (never seen her in anything before, liked her), interplay between characters, particularly Bond & M.

What wasn't? Product placement, convoluted plot (who was the principal 'bad guy'? We just don't know for most of the film), too many false endings, too long.

But I'm with Marcus in that the final, final ending was pretty near perfect. Was that the only time he said the line in the entire film?

And for the first time in several films, the opening theme song was a proper Bond theme song. Madonna's Die Another Day was just plain wrong and neither Garbage (The World is not Enough) or Sheryl Crow (Tomorrow Never Dies) were quite right.

Following my usual film ratings system, I'd have to give this 7/10 (Good, worth a second viewing sometime, but not worth buying the DVD).

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As an aside, the film was rated 12A. This means that the BBFC think that it is not suitable for children under the age of 12. Personally I'd have ranked it more of a 15 - I can't believe that all that violence, murder, torture, etc. has no effect on impressionable, young teenage, minds.

So why, oh why, do some parents think that it is suitable to take 8 and 9 year old kids along to see it? There were at least 10 under 12s in the cinema last night, inlcluding two who quite possibly were under 8. I had to suppress the urge to make comments to the parents on the way out of the cinema, beacuse it clearly wasn't a film suitable for kids of that age.

Can kids not just enjoy kids films without being subjected to adult material from an early age?

Rant over. Night night.