Casino Royale
Saw the new Bond flick this weekend. Considering the ridiculous amount of hype about the movie, and, well, because it’s Bond, I fully expected that I would be seeing garbage. However, I was greatly mistaken. To my surprise, Casino Royale really is an excellent movie. Other Bond films may be pretty, or entertaining, but this is the first one in the franchise that might qualify as a work of art. The acting is good. The plot twists are actually hard to foresee. Bond is not a superman. The mood is darker, the humor isn’t as lighthearted. The dialogue goes far beyond the standard 007 clichés. And the action scenes aren’t bad either. In short, go see it while theaters are still showing it, you will not be disappointed.
My only complaint about the movie was excessive product placement. Sure, Ford Motor Co. and Sony Corp must have paid quite a bit of money, but couldn’t the filmmakers have been a teeny bit more subtle about it? When one sees same blatant advertising-angle shots of the same logos for the tenth time, one’s reaction goes from “neat product, might wanna buy it” to “eat flaming death, you corporate whores”.