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Casino Royale, the
21st James Bond film from EON Productions has already become the most
controversial of the series’ 44-year run, mainly thanks to the surprise
casting of the versatile British actor Daniel Craig in the role of James
Bond 007 and the response by the British press and an unquantifiable
number of Bond fans.
This week has seen the Bond filmmakers EON Productions mount a PR charm
offensive to counter much of the negative publicity the film and its star
has already received 8 months before it even premieres; and if any of the
behind the scenes footage aired on TV around the world this week is
anything to go by, then the film is going to be a lot grittier and harder
hitting than what cinema audiences have come to expect from a Bond film.
But one question raised is - will it still be a ‘James Bond film’?
The producers have wisely returned to the casting ways of the Sixties by
placing relatively unknown young actors in the lead roles, something which
undoubtedly will make their characters more believable in the contemporary
context of the film.
Anyone seeing French actress Eva Green in Bernado Bertolucci’s highly
erotic The Dreamers (if you haven’t buy it now immediately from
Amazon) will know she has everything that a top Bond Girl needs - plus the
added benefit of being a fine actress. The camera loves her, and this will
undoubtedly give her the potential to make Vesper Lynd one of the most
memorable Bond Girls in the series.
The casting of African-American actor Jeffrey Wright in the role of Felix
Leiter has raised eyebrows in certain quarters, as did Bernie Casey being
cast as Bond’s friend and CIA ally back in 1983’s non-EON production,
Never Say Never Again. Although it seems unlikely that Ian Fleming (Glidrose)
Publications will voice any concern about a black actor being cast as
Leiter this time around. Ian Fleming purists will no doubt quote Leiter’s
straw-coloured hair as a defining necessity for anyone playing the role,
but in a film that has already had more than its fair share of follicle
foolishness i.e. “James Blond!” etc. etc. it really shouldn’t matter a
hoot at this stage of the game, as the majority of cinemagoers in the 21st
Century have no idea about Ian Fleming, who he was, or what he wrote, let
alone any physical description of any of his characters. And you can
probably include James Bond in that sweeping statement as well. Whether
Wright is the right man for the job, and why there’s not a white man for
the job, may be open to debate, and while some quarters would consider his
casting, like Casey’s before him, a cynical ploy to attract other ethnic
groups to the movie theatre, one important fact remains - Jeffrey Wright
is the best kind of actor - versatile and believable in every role he
takes. But on the face of it, if someone had asked me last year about
casting an actor who had previously played Dr Martin Luther King Jr and
the Brooklyn avant-garde artist Jean-Michel Basquiat as Felix Leiter, my
eyebrows may well have raised like Roger Moore’s Spitting Image puppet!
Wright has already worked with Daniel Craig in the Nicole Kidman sci-fi
movie The Visiting, so this could help build an early onscreen
chemistry between the two men.
With the rest of the cast resembling a veritable United Nations assembly
gathering, one could be forgiven for thinking that the filmmakers are
playing the odds by gathering audience support from every country
possible. Not a bad idea either!
Another name unknown to UK and American audiences (unless you’ve seen King
Arthur starring Clive Owen) is Danish-born actor Mads Mikkelsen, looking
every bit as deadly as a young Jack Palance, who should make an intriguing
Le Chiffre. Gone is the Benzedrine sniffing podgy-faced father-figure
villain from Fleming’s 1953 novel, to be replaced with a hard-edged
ruthless contemporary paymaster of world terrorism, who physically looks
more than a match for Craig’s new pumped up muscular 007.
Veteran Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini rounds off the acting muscle in
Casino Royale as Mathis, another character from Fleming’s novel,
and very much in the tradition of Bond’s older allies in the Sixties’
movies. Regular cinemagoers will best remember Giannini as the unfortunate
Inspector Pazzi in 2001’s Hannibal, while students of world cinema
his fine performances in the films of Lina Vertmüller. He’s one of those
rare actors who immediately garner warmth from the audience, much in the
style of Pedro Armendariz in From Russia With Love and Gabriele
Ferzetti in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. |
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In a recent sound-bite
interview, Casino Royale director Martin Campbell said: “I am
convinced that Craig is the best actor who has ever - and I mean ever -
played James Bond”. High praise indeed! But wasn’t the same kind of
hyperbole being thrown around when Timothy Dalton took over the role in
1987? Campbell also volunteered: “GoldenEye was a Bond formula
movie, but that led into a dead end. We cannot go and blast away control
centres for another 10 years. We're going back to the beginning: No CGI,
but good old fist fights.” As though that was Brosnan’s fault? Campbell
continued: “It's not personal. It has nothing to do with Pierce. But we
needed to re-boot the whole franchise. We show that Bond will suffer from
emotional and physical pain. Honestly, we couldn't do that with Pierce.” A
point I’m sure Mr Brosnan and many others would love to debate!
Many have wondered why the producers decided to take Bond back to a
beginning we’ve never seen before; producer Barbara Broccoli kind of
summed it all up rather succinctly: “We are aware that filming book #1 as
film #21 doesn't make any sense. It's total nonsense. But it's fun.” I do
hope so.
With Paul Haggis spending around three weeks polishing the script that
Neal Purvis and Rob Wade penned over a period of a year-and-a-half, one
would hope that the recent Oscar-winner has brought some of the
complicated characterisation found in his movie Crash to the characters in
Casino Royale.
Regardless of the charm offensive it would appear the tabloids still can’t
resist sending up Daniel Craig. Even after being interviewed exclusively
for The Sun the newspaper still couldn’t resist poking fun at the shirt he
wore in the shots specially posed for the newspaper, asking cheekily in a
17 point caption if he’s going to “….be the hardest Bond ever” - “So why
is he wearing a girl’s blouse?” Come on fellers, give the guy a break.
Don’t you know a dress shirt when you see one?
The major problem it seems for many of Craig’s detractors, including this
writer, is that he just doesn’t look like a James Bond. He doesn’t fit the
tall dark stereotype that the cinema-going world has come to expect and
have been familiar with since 1962. When Sean Connery announced his
departure from the Bond series for the first time after You Only Live
Twice in 1967, Bond fans held their heads in their hands in disbelief
and wondered who on earth could fill his shoes. I, like many people,
wasn’t convinced anyone could until I sat in the ODEON Leicester Square in
1969 and watched George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
beat the crap out of two henchmen on a beach in Portugal. From then on in
I was with him all the way for the next two hours and twenty minutes - he
was James Bond! And Timothy Dalton also pulled off that rare feat of
having you root for him from the off. From the moment Dalton turns to
camera on the Rock of Gibraltar with the wind blowing his hair out of
place, he’s got you, he’s Bond and you’re behind him all the way through
The Living Daylights. If Daniel Craig can pull this off in the same
time frame he’ll have the audience eating out of his hand for the rest of
the picture.
But still the BIG question remains; will this seem like a ‘James Bond
film’? And, will the cinema-going public take Craig to their hearts, like
they did Sean, Roger, and Pierce? In the long run it really doesn’t matter
what any Bond commentator or critic thinks, or thinks they know, and
certainly not what moronic websites like CraigNotBond.com espouse. In the
final outcome it will be the ordinary cinema-going public around the world
that give the thumbs up or down on Daniel Craig’s first performance as
Agent 007.
It’s quite clear in all the footage and interviews we’ve seen so far that
Craig is fiercely committed to achieving the best he possibly can with the
role, which is no more than you’d expect from one of the most exciting
screen actors to come out of the UK since the Sixties. I believe his
statement in his most recent interview speaks volumes: “I know there a lot
of fans out there who James Bond is incredibly important to. I want to
make it clear he is incredibly important to me as well.” |
