You're Still More Of A Man Than Anyone I've Ever Known

Casino Royale
Directed by Who Cares

I'm not much of a James Bond fan, but this was the only film I was tempted to watch on the airline's playlist when I flew back from Auckland (they only had the same Family Guy ep I watched last time and no Simpsons! Disgraceful!). I've seen most of the Pierce Brosnan films in theatres and in an incredibly stupid action movie kind of way I found them satisfying, scratching that masculine urge to see things go fast, blow up, drink cocktails and show cleavage, not necessarily in that order.

This one fucking sucked though. There was not enough action, terrible pacing and boring villains, basically the plot was rubbish. Daniel Craig makes a decent enough Bond, but the story is paced like it was the debut novel by a second rate potboiling hack. Oh wait, it was. At any rate I don't know what soulless audience-testing money hungry multinational picture company greenlighted a script in which the titular climactic casino scene is over by the two thirds mark and most of the rest of the film is a long drawn out hug and kiss between Bond and his new girlfriend, during which he may as well have written 'target practice' on her forehead.

Which brings me to another topic, the confused error of the writers in assuming that James Bond should have a personality or human motivations. In the recent films at least James Bond is not a person, he is an emotionless robot consuming Martinis and releasing them at high velocity in the form of bullets, ejaculate or one liners as the situation requires. Any attempt to humanise what is really only a laughably shallow Hollywood projection of a hyper masculine Ur-Male is misguided in the most amusing way possible. Which is why when the female 'lead' (why even bother with the indignity of the term, any woman in a Bond film is there only to be fucked and/or die (OK except for Judi Dench, but I bet the studio execs are wishing they could replace her with a man)) utters the line “If the only thing left of you was your smile and your little finger, you'd still be more of a man than anyone I've ever known,” I had to resist the temptation to turn around, wake up the old lady sleeping beside me and gesture at the screen saying “Can you believe this shit? How stupid do they think movie goers are today?”