MOVIE REVIEWS: CASINO ROYALE
Friday, November 17 2006
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Like their British counterparts, American film critics are bestowing high praise on Daniel Craig for his performance as James Bond in Casino Royale. "Daniel Craig is just right in the role," Michael Phillips writes in the Chicago Tribune. "Craig is definitely the Real Thing," comments Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Amy Biancolli enthuses in the Houston Chronicle. "Craig's performance categorically silences the naysayers, igniting the film with a combustible, half-cocked virility that the series hasn't seen since the Sean Connery era." "Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Sean [Connery]," applauds Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News. But Peter Howell in the Toronto Star puts it this way: "The debate will continue as to who constitutes the best Bond, but there's no question that he is the right Bond for these times." Critics also seem generally pleased with the "reimagining" of the Bond franchise. Chris Vognar observes in the Dallas Morning News: "Casino doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it does spin the franchise in some gritty new directions. The characters seem less like props in an ongoing adolescent fantasy. The tone isn't as cute or vapid as most installments; it's actually a little sinister compared with any recent Bond. ... The movie feels both old and new. It is quietly, casually revisionist in its reinvention." Manohla Dargis in the New York Times underlines the difference: "Here what pops off the screen aren't the exploding orange fireballs that have long been a staple of the Bond films and have been taken to new pyrotechnic levels by Hollywood producers like Jerry Bruckheimer, but some sensational stunt work and a core seriousness. Successful franchises are always serious business, yet this is the first Bond film in a long while that feels as if it were made by people who realize they have to fight for audiences' attention, not just bank on it." The critics do have a number of reservations with the film. Nearly all conclude that it is too long. Several remark that it lacks the humor of its predecessors. Several remark that they don't miss Q or Miss Moneypenny. But Joel Siegel on Good Morning America suggested that what he missed most was the Bond theme music. "At first I thought....there was some kind of rights problem, they couldn't use the music. Turns out they were saving it until the movie's over."
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