Neither shaken nor stirred

So I came home from break and reconnected with my family by watching a TV screen for two hours. Specifically, Casino Royale. What I didn't realize until watching the film was that this movie, unlike the ones that came before, attempts to take us back to the days before the signature drink and polished cuff-links. Back when Bond, much like Madonna and Cher, went by his first name.

The movie assumes that most of us, long-time Bond fans or at least acquaintances, actually care. The truth is, I don't think much can explain James Bond - he's a cartoon character. He's bizarre and quirky and unrealistic. I never felt tempted to look behind the curtain. I just assumed the rooms back there were empty.

So what to make of the heartrending hero in Casino Royale? He gets poisoned and beaten up and doesn't even know what his signature drink is. Worse, he has emotions. He declares to his erstwhile lover, "You've stripped me of my armor." Oh Bond, you certainly haven't stripped me of mine. Part of my disbelief might stem from Daniel Craig's wooden delivery of the deeply emotional love scene. He sounds like he's reading a teleprompter.

Or perhaps I was distracted by his barrel-muscled chest. This may be the first Bond film to boast more male nudity than female. At one gruesome point Bond is tied to a chair, and a villain says to him, "You've certainly worked on your body, James." And James has: he looks fresh from the gyms of Hollywood, waxed and tanned and ready to fight evil (or at least flab and unwanted hair.) I saw Craig in Layer Cake and he looked great, or at least, on the far better side of average. Now he resembles an amateur bodybuilder. As the villain goes on to say, "such a waste." I couldn't agree more. As an action hero, he does all right. Despite being handicapped by his awful spray tan, Craig has an amoral rawness that makes Peirce Brosnan's Bond look, well, girly.

And then there are the real girls. Judi Dench steals every scene she's in, delivering lines like "I might have to have you killed" with such spine-tingling sincerity that even I, miles away from England, was looking over my shoulder. The hapless wife of some millionaire ends up dangling from a hammock as thanks for her attraction to James, but the real Bond girl, Vesper Lynd, is amazing. If there were more accountants like her, there would be no such thing as tax evasion. Her scenes with Bond are interesting, but the two lovers get sacrificed on the altar of poor writing (Case in point: Lynd says to Bond, "You know, even if there were nothing left of you but an easy smile and your little finger, you'd still be more of a man than anyone I've ever met." He answers, "Well, that's because you know what I can do with my little finger." Poignant. Perhaps Lynd is confusing Bond with Judi Dench's character.)

And finally, some things about the film are just bizarre. The opening chase scene, set in a construction yard, casts Bond and his prey as Chinese action heroes doing parkour. In the penultimate scene, Bond tenders his resignation to M16 - through Gmail. And how about the fact that Bond is chasing terrorists (or so we're led to believe, the only villains I see are some especially violent stock-brokers.) By the end of the film Bond has wrecked a construction yard, an embassy and a Venetian palace. Honestly, who needs car bombs when this guy is running around?