Why Casi­no Royale is the great­est block­buster of the 21^st century

With bit­ter jokes already cir­cu­lat­ing on movie Twit­ter that the next instal­ment in the James Bond fran­chise will see 007 fight­ing back against #Brex­it – a shad­owy, omnipresent vil­lain-of-the-moment to rival Spec­tre – it seems as good a time as any to revis­it Casi­no Royale. Released late in 2006 to a slight­ly skep­ti­cal glob­al audi­ence still smart­ing from the indig­ni­ties of the late Bros­nan Bonds, it was instant­ly hailed as a return to form, with Daniel Craig earn­ing favourable Con­nery com­par­isons in the process. Ten years on, the film doesn’t just hold up as the best Bond movie since the 1960s, but it also looks more and more like the start­ing point for a series of sub­se­quent and increas­ing­ly dis­ap­point­ing missed oppor­tu­ni­ties. In short, its fol­low-ups have been unworthy.

Craig’s fatigue was evi­dent in Spec­tre, not the worst of his out­ings but maybe the most desul­to­ry. Many crit­ics have sug­gest­ed that hav­ing so many movies in a row with Bond either off-duty or off-the-grid has wrecked the basic appeal of the char­ac­ter, and this might be why Casi­no Royale holds up: it’s about an hon­est-to-good­ness MI6 assign­ment, with Bond infil­trat­ing a pok­er game to keep a weapons deal­er from recoup­ing cru­cial lost funds. Bond’s sat­is­fac­tion at being bankrolled by the British gov­ern­ment is evi­dent – and infec­tious: this was the last time that Craig was allowed to be tru­ly relaxed and charis­mat­ic in the role.

Its star’s excel­lent per­for­mance aside, the true hero of Casi­no Royale is Mar­tin Camp­bell, a steady direc­to­r­i­al hand dat­ing back to 1994’s No Escape, a dystopi­an prison break thriller shot on his home turf of the Sev­enth Con­ti­nent, and sub­se­quent­ly on most of the Hol­ly­wood genre fare he was offered after Gold­en­Eye. (Let’s not speak of Green Lantern). As the direc­tor behind two effec­tive series reboots, Camp­bell sure­ly deserves a lit­tle mon­u­ment in some cor­ner of the Flem­ing-verse, but where Gold­en­Eye rev­elled in old-school car­tooni­ness, Casi­no Royale was cal­i­brat­ed for (rel­a­tive) seri­ous­ness from the get-go – a tone very much in vogue in the mid-2000s after the crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess of Bat­man Begins.

The dif­fer­ence was that unlike Christo­pher Nolan, Camp­bell could actu­al­ly stage an action scene, and the show-open­er in Casi­no Royale is an all-timer, a park­our-pro­pelled pur­suit around and through a con­struc­tion site in Mada­gas­car that’s so fast and furi­ous that seems to have been con­jured rather than chore­o­graphed, shot and edit­ed. Where the terse, black-and-white pro­logue in which Craig earns his license to kill feels strate­gi­cal­ly brack­et­ed off from the rest of the movie (in the grand tra­di­tion of oth­er Bond cur­tain rais­ers) the chase, which goes on so long it feels like the alley con­fronta­tion in They Live (in the best pos­si­ble way), serves as a pré­cis of the rest of the movie, which is all about the dif­fi­cul­ties of track­ing a mov­ing tar­get. What makes this Bond so com­pelling is not just Craig’s snub-nosed charis­ma, but the way he can nev­er quite get a bead on his adver­saries, and, in the absence of any real back­up plan, crash­es for­ward anyway.

There are oth­er excel­lent­ly con­ceived and exe­cut­ed set pieces in Casi­no Royale, includ­ing a fight on a run­way at Mia­mi Inter­na­tion­al Air­port that ends with the explo­sion of a mas­sive air­lin­er, and a final trip to Venice inflect­ed by imagery from Nico­las Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. But the most endur­ing moments are char­ac­ter-based: Bond’s din­ing-car con­ver­sa­tion with Eva Green’s Ves­per Lynd, who has James and his grim back­sto­ry dead to rights with­in moments of meet­ing him; the sly­ly fun­ny pok­er-table intro­duc­tion of CIA cipher Felix Leit­er (Jef­frey Wright); and, of course, the extend­ed, unabashed­ly homo­erot­ic tor­ture scene in which La Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) delights in lit­er­al­ly hav­ing 007 by the balls, a bit of stag­ing that sees and rais­es Goldfinger’s icon­ic emas­cu­la­tion-by-laser-beam tableaux.

That the inten­si­ty doesn’t feel bru­tal­ly imposed on the mate­r­i­al is a tes­ta­ment to Campbell’s sense of tone, which is allowed to fluc­tu­ate with­out break­ing, and also pac­ing, which is prac­ti­cal­ly mag­is­te­r­i­al by action-movie stan­dards. Instead of being over­long at 144 min­utes, Casi­no Royale feels epic, which is just right for a sto­ry that is meant to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cre­ate, devel­op and then final­ly (re)define a hero worth fol­low­ing in future instal­ments. As gru­elling as it is to talk about ​“world-build­ing” in a post-Mar­vel con­text, Casi­no Royale unfurled a uni­verse of anx­ious, unsta­ble geopol­i­tics and shift­ing alle­giances that should have been the per­fect play­ground for an agent not always will­ing or able to sub­or­di­nate his baser impuls­es to the demands of duty.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, instead of using the idea of Bond get­ting per­son­al as a motif in future adven­tures, the series’ care­tak­ers dou­bled down on it to the point that both Sky­fall and Spec­tre were drowned in pound­ing waves of expo­si­tion. With Sam Mendes on the record as say­ing he’s ready to move on (and with Craig look­ing increas­ing­ly like­ly to join him), we can only hope that Bar­bara Broc­coli has a suc­ces­sion plan in mind. Here’s hop­ing she still has Mar­tin Campbell’s dig­its in her rolodex.

What do you think is the great­est block­buster of the 21^st cen­tu­ry? Have your say @LWLies