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'007 hits bull's eye'
08/11/2006 14:45 - (SA)
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| Casino Royale opens in South Africa on December 1. |
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Marc Burleigh
Paris - James Bond may be the spy who never ages, but over his 44-year film career his adventures have swollen ridiculously with impossible gadgets, implausible plots and implacable super villains.
Well, this is the year Bond trimmed those excesses and got back to basics.
In the latest 007 film, Casino Royale, the entire franchise gets a reboot, effectively introducing the audience to Bond all over again by showing how he became licensed to kill and how he learned the elegance that became his trademark.
And it's Daniel Craig, the newest Bond actor who shines in that task, carrying its weight effortlessly on his shoulders and the rest of his very, very fit body.
Critics who have started seeing Casino Royale ahead of its worldwide release later this month have already crowned Craig one of the best Bonds yet - so good, so physical, so dangerous, he approaches the Holy Grail of Bondage: Sean Connery himself.
"Daniel Craig has come through with flying colours as Ian Fleming's sadistic secret agent in the most violent Bond film yet," was how the reviewer for Britain's The Times newspaper put it.
No doubts
"Any doubts about the popularity and suitability of Craig as the new James Bond have dissipated, following London and New York screenings," the rival Telegraph said.
The film runs long - at two hours and 15 minutes, it's the longest Bond film yet - but director Martin Campbell has eschewed the futuristic technology of past outings (no invisible cars here) and plots about blowing up the world to concentrate instead on character.
Reviewers at a Paris screening on Tuesday noted that right from the opening sequence, Casino Royale flags its dark, violent tone by showing Bond's first kills in black and white footage.
It then tips him into an adventure that takes him to the Bahamas, Miami, Montenegro and Italy to tackle an organisation financing terrorism.
The movie is informed by a more knowing, less innocent style, one that muscles in on the territory evident in the James Bond rip-offs made in the United States, such as the TV series 24 and the series of Jason Bourne films - both of whose heroes share the same initials as Britain's super spy.
Here, Bond recovers his heavyweight espionage title from the interlopers, matching them in spectacular action sequences while showing them up with his European panache.
Ripped, buff results
For Craig, 38, the film was a chance to show both his acting chops, honed from a long career on stage and in television in Britain, and his athletic style, highlighted in movies such as Lara Croft and Steven Spielberg's Munich.
Those credentials on the big screen have apparently overcome scepticism from die-hard Bond fans. One, Dave Winter writing on www.commanderbond.net, said "Daniel Craig is James Bond... he looks so confident in the role."
Craig has told interviewers that he trained physically very hard since being given the role of Bond because he wanted to do as many of his own stunts as possible.
"As a result, I became an athlete, which means I hurt myself but continued, accepted it and went through to a higher level of pain," he said.
The ripped, buff results are there to see - especially in a scene where Bond is stripped and tortured by the sadistic villain, who uses a heavy rope to cudgel 007's genitals.
That moment - unprecedented in its violence for a Bond film - was cut down in the British release of Casino Royale in order to earn a 12-years-and-over audience rating.
Regardless, Campbell has said he is proud to have delivered the most realistic Bond movie yet, one in which the previous flawless spy can be seen making mistakes, and balancing his human side against the inhuman nature of his profession.
"At the end of the film, he becomes the man we know.... This is a more realistic and emotionally involving film than the previous ones," he said.
Casino Royale is to get its international premiere in London on November 14 and open in cinemas around the world in the days following.
- AFP
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