Bleeding Bond

You know what struck me 10 minutes into the new Bond flick, Casino Royale? Bond bleeds; he's almost human, dammit!

Daniel Craig plays a very different Bond from what's been the norm so far. Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan etc were mere clones of the sheer force of personality that Connery originally brought to the role (and pretty poor clones at that; I liked Connery so much that I've not seen most of the other Bond movies since, except for a couple of Roger Moore ones). Bond here is relatively new at being 007, and Craig brings alive Bond's desperation to succeed. Despite not looking the part, Craig has enough vitality to pull it off. I guess it helps that this Bond is not the suave, confident and one-liner spouting cool spy we are all so used to. Instead, Craig's Bond is a blonde athletic man with an arcebic wit to boot, who gradually grows into Bond (this might be something that the director Martin Campbell actually devised; if so, more credit to him).

The story is pretty simplistic; in a corny, corny scene Bond even wakes up from the dead (literally!). The Bond girl (Vesper) here is pretty alright, and the character provides some kind of insight into why Bond goes on to treat women the way he does. Its probably good that Aishwarya Rai was not picked for this role; she'd have fluttered her large eyelashes through the role. Eva Green does a neat job of it, bringing in quite a bit of intrigue to her character.

The bleeding-eyes villain is rather lame. The card-game, which could have been so good, is very poorly done. The action scenes are excellent (particularly the grainy opening scene inside the bathroom, and the chase until the Embassy), but the Bond car (with all the gadgets) was desperately missed. The movie could definitely be trimmed down by at least 30 minutes.

Worth a watch, at least to see Craig as Bond.