While James Bond was reinvented in 2006 with Casino Royale, chances are that it never would have happened without Jason Bourne. In 2002, Matt Damon brought Jason Bourne to life, and with him, ushered in an entirely new sort of spy to a world that had never seen his like.
Most of us were used to having our martinis served a particular way. Maybe you had seen Pierce Brosnan as Bond, or maybe you caught him in The Thomas Crown Affair before that – but it’s still the old-school spy. No longer. Spies have grown up. Or maybe they haven’t. Instead of being sauve and debonair, they are now rough and tumble, in step with what the younger movie-going crowd wants.
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Casino Royale is interesting in a number of ways. It is the twenty-first film in the James Bond series. It is the third time that the novel by the same name has been adapted into a film (though the first as a “real” Bond film). It is the first time Daniel Craig took on the mantle of the superspy. But it’s also important for one other reason. It’s a significant restart of the franchise.
In the movie, we get to go back to the beginning – the very beginning – where Bond first earns his stripes (and his legendary “double o” status). The movie is much grittier in style than the others in the series, to be sure – no sign of any of the previous Bonds to be found, and that’s not an entirely bad thing.
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Posted to
Action on June 15th, 2007 by Chad Everett
Though I have often been called a geek, it’s usually because I like computers and such. I did collect comics when I was younger (okay, when I was older too), but not as much as some other people I knew. I’ve always been more of a technical geek than a hidden-away-geek. Not that there’s anything wrong with either.
As such, I’m generally on the periphery of most movies that have anything to do with comicdom. I can typically keep up – while my wife would often run or walk the other way – and I can often enjoy them to at least some degree. But in this case, I didn’t so much. I liked the original Fantastic Four, and I’m aware enough of who the Silver Surfer was to be able to keep up, but I just didn’t really care for this sequel.
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A seemingly never-ending line of dirt-encrusted men, women and at least one child prepare to be hanged in the gallows, all to appease Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) and his war on the pirates. As they march endlessly towards their doom, a cryer announces that item after item is suspended. No longer can people gather, demonstrate or even have lawyers. Instead, they can just die.
Then, a young lad, clutching a piece of eight, begins to softly sing. The song is gradually picked up by each of the others in line behind him, until it seems that everyone is singing the haunting song. This seems to do nothing more than infuriate Beckett.
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Hapless Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) is in danger of losing his son, Nick (Jake Cherry). He’s not really concerned about his ex-wife, but Nick? That worries him. Especially when Nick mentions that he’s ready to hang up his hockey skates and start practicing to be a stockbroker, like his new dad, Don (Paul Rudd).
Spurred on by the thought of losing his son’s hockey career to the over-achieving Don – or at least to his utility belt of cell phones, Larry decides that he needs to get on with his life and do something. So begging for a job at the unemployment office, he begs for just about anything. What he gets is something that no one would have expected.
You see, Larry gets a job as a night watchman and the Museum of Natural History. And as they say, history has a way of coming to life. It’s never been more true than it is at this place after they lock the doors for the night.
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Just as Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) comes home to visit his wife, he is met by a few less-than-upstanding citizens who want to cause trouble. Unfortunately for them, Poe is an Army Ranger, which means that they probably aren’t in the best position when it comes to a fight.
So when they decide to ambush him outside the bar, Poe gets the best of them. But when all is said and done, and one of them ends up dead on the ground, it is Poe who gets the short end of the stick. All he was doing was protecting his wife, but since he is trained as a deadly weapon, he ends up in prison.
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The small African nation of Sierra Leone is situated next to Liberia, and while Liberia produces billions of dollars of diamonds annually, Sierra Leone produces virtually none. The reason for this, at least according to this movie, is that the diamonds within Sierra Leone are taken by rebel forces and then sold to fund their rebellion.
In the process, countless families are broken up, with the lucky ones killed off immediately, but many others left maimed, physically or emotionally (or in many cases both). The healthy men are used for mining these diamonds, while the youth can be taken to replenish the forces that are killed in the process of doing so. It’s not a pretty sight.
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The rumor says that if Elektra (Jennifer Garner) is going to kill you, she will whisper in your ear before you even know that she is there.
As the movie opens, we see that Elektra can indeed defeat an entire army of people who have been assigned the task of defending a single person. Naturally she gets past them without so much as breaking a sweat or even making it seem like a difficult task. But that is what she does.
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At the site of a lavish celebratory party, thrown by a Japanese company wanting to celebrate their purchase of a US company, the mood turns decidedly unhappy when someone turns up dead on the boardroom table. The fact that it’s a young woman, who is most assuredly not Japanese, is probably not a good sign.
Detective Webster Smith (Wesley Snipes) is called in to investigate, and quickly teamed up with Captain John Connor (Sean Connery). This partner arrangement, where a younger. more inexperienced investigator, would be paired with a wiser, more seasoned man, is quite common for the Japanese. Apparently.
Unfortunately, Webb isn’t too happy about either his new partner or the fact that the Japanese don’t want their party to be disturbed. But life is about to get a lot more interesting for him.
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On the morning of Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), an American Terrorist sets off a bomb in an SUV aboard a ferry, killing more than five hundred people aboard, as the fireball sets off another explosion in the boiler, and eventually the remains sink to the bottom of the river.
ATF Agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) is assigned the grisly task of figuring out exactly what happened, and as such, he’s one of the first on the scene collecting evidence. His partner, who had just taken off for vacation, is nowhere to be found, not even answering his cell phone.
Before long, Carlin is assigned to a special task force researching the event, and finds himself drawn into a special new technology that allows the investigators to look back into the past four-and-a-half days (technically, four days and six hours, but no one seems to notice this, so I’ll pretend not to do so either) to see what’s happening. The only catch is that this time window is open only for that exact period, and once that time window is gone, it can’t be recovered.
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