Film - Casino Royale

In Summary - A strong recommendation to go and watch this film.

I'll be honest from the start... I've never read the book (or indeed any other of Fleming's works). This meant that whilst I'd heard that the film was meant to be quite close to the book in its portrayal of the lead character; I had no idea when watching what they had changed / included and what had been left alone. It is a return to a gritty, emotional Bond - gone are the Roger Moore era lifted eyebrows and immaculate attitude in all situations - and in comes blood, cut lips, and the serious need for a shower halfway through a poker game. In this aspect it feels more like a proper film rather than 'Carry on Bond' as the most recent films have done (invisible car anyone...).

It is however let-down in a couple of places I feel - the fact that the climax comes 2/3rds of the way through the film rather than at the end means that whilst it's important what happens after the poker game, you feel like the principal battle has already been won. True, it is necessary for emotional development of the Bond character, but could this not have taken place earlier. I'm not entirely convinced with the way they showed the poker game either... they assumed the viewer knew how to play for one thing (so I had to spend 10mins at the end of the film explaining to my father how Texas hold-em works...). And for the other they dragged it out (cos it is really important) but not by showing exciting poker playing, but by Bond getting attacked and poisoned and anything else other than playing poker!

Having said all of the above it is a very enjoyable film - and you don't realise that you are watching a Bond for a lot of the film, it 'just' comes across as a great action adventure film.

If you want another, equally impressed take, I suggest you wander over to Baron-Scarpia's site for his intelligent meanderings on the subject.

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As far as a Christian viewpoint on the film goes:

This film is violent - very violent in places, and the opening killing by Bond to get his 'double-0' is particularly savage. Does the film as a whole condone violence though? I'm not sure that it does, and in fact goes the other way - whilst we see Bond being violent and getting away with murder (literally of course) - We also see the pain and hurt that this causes too. Physically (Bond ends up far more bloodied and bruised in this outing than in any other I can remember), but also emotionally and mentally. When Vesper Lynd sees Bond kill a person in front of her we see her afterwards cowering in a shower, unable to wash the blood from her hands. (Nice allusion to MacBeth if a little obvious). In showing this brutal aspect of what it is that Bond does, we see how violence and death should affect us, and thus lead us to pursue more peaceful paths.

As far as where Bonds emotional development goes - we see in this film, for the first time since On Her Majesty's Secret Service that he does have a heart, but we also see how it turns to stone rather than love and the reasons behind that. In my view this shows how we should pity, rather than judge, and how we should try and empathise, rather than moralise. There are many people in this world who are emotionally broken and who react to that broken-ness in different ways - with Bond, as with all of those, we should be showing how the Love of Christ will not betray or get taken away, but is eternal and everlasting.