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Back in 2006, a muscle-bound, tight-trunk wearing Daniel Craig slowly emerged from the glistening Caribbean Sea looking over us into the distance, his piercing blue eyes penetrating the audience. The iconic scene, so reminiscent of Ursula Andrews’ turn in the original 007 outing, Dr. No, made some four and a half decades earlier, saw the debut of a Bond for a new generation, Craig the new, though slightly recognisable hero in a film that would re-energise the franchise for modern cinema-goers. Now, as Craig prepares to play the character in his fifth outing, his last turn as Mi6’s finest, we look back at Casino Royale and why it may just be the best film in the six-decade-long franchise.
When Daniel Craig was announced as 007 all the way back in 2005, the Bond franchise wasn’t in the place that it is now. The final film in Pierce Brosnan’s run ended just three years earlier with Die Another Day, a massively-budgeted epic that received mixed reviews upon its release. It still managed to make a lot of money – $435 million in worldwide takings – but it was clear that something new needed to be injected into the series.
The reception to Craig’s casting was originally less than favourable. A blonde Bond? It seems crazy to look back now after the huge success of the actor in the role, but in the mid ‘00s Craig had everything to prove in his biggest role to date.
Producers Michael G, Wilson and Barbara Broccoli clearly knew what they were doing, and after deciding to reboot the series with a new actor in the lead – and present a less experienced and more vulnerable Bond on-screen – brought Goldeneye’s Martin Campbell back on board to direct. The screenplay, written by series regulars Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, along with the acclaimed filmmaker Paul Haggis, positioned its protagonist as an MI6 agent still to earn his stripes and the ‘license to kill’. The opening scene sets the scene perfectly as we see 007 doing just that by taking out MI6 section chief Dryden and his contact. It was an introduction that was unforgettable, and one that would only be surpassed by the 144 minutes of cinematic bliss that follows.
There are the sensational free-running scenes which take place on the streets of Madagascar with Bond relentlessly pursuing the villainous bomb maker Mollaka (Sébastien Foucan), the introduction of the main villain of the piece, a scene-stealing Mads Mikkelsen as the iconic Le Chiffre, as well as the continuing ‘M’ played by Judi Dench – reprising her role from the Brosnan run – and then Eva Green as Vesper Lynd, an agent for Her Majesty’s Treasury who supervises and finances Bond as the legendary game of high stakes poker at the famous Casino Royale.
The scene at the centre of the movie provide the film’s finest moments. Set in a world which was starting to compete with the online casino, the high stakes poker game is massively old-school. In previous films, Bond is seen playing a variety of games in the casino arena, but this is the first time we see him play Texas Hold ‘Em, a simple game of poker that was starting to see a rise in popularity as professional games started to be broadcast on television, and the superstars started to emerge from the high stakes games on the world circuit. The Casino Royale scenes at the heart of the movie work due to the pinpoint accuracy of staging, but the scenes are memorable for the poisoning of Bond at the table and his mid-game high-speed dash back to his trusty Aston Martin to find an antidote to the toxin slipped to him.
Casino Royale works because it has a great villain in Le Chiffre – a masterful performance by Mikkelsen – and the grounded nature of the narrative – there are no invisible cars involved here. By the time the climax of the movie arrives and Craig finally takes those famous few steps before turning his Walther PPK toward the screen, the audience becomes aware that this isn’t just a reboot of the franchise, but the start of a much bigger universe – Casino Royale just the first part of a multi-film narrative.
The $600 million that it took at cinemas around the world proved that audiences were still hungry for the character, something that would be re-enforced over the instalments that followed. In fact, Craig’s third outing as 007 would become the highest grossing movie in the entire series, and the second highest grossing film of 2012 with $1.1 billion in worldwide gross.
Its success continues, the 25th movie about to go into production this year for a 2020 release, but it can all be tracked back to 2006 and a brave, though highly skilled delivery of a film that continues to stand the test of time.
