Dom Robinson reviews
Distributed by
Columbia Pictures Home Video
1-disc DVD: 
2-disc DVD:
Blu-Ray DVD:
- Cert:
- Cat.no: 23751 DVD
- Running time: 127 minutes
- Year: 2006
- Pressing: 2007
- Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 28 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround EX, DTS 5.1 ES
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English for the hard of hearing, Hindi
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
- 16:9-enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- RRP: £9.99
- Extras:
None
Director:
(Along Came a Spider, Die Another Day, The Edge, The Guide, Mulholland Falls, Once Were Warriors, The Stanford Prison Experiment, Thunderbox, TV: The Ray Bradbury Theatre, The Sopranos)
Producers:
Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson
Screenplay:
Neal Purvis and Robert Wade
Music:
Cast:
James Bond: Daniel Craig
Vesper Lynd: Eva Green
Le Chiffre: Mads Mikkelsen
M: Judi Dench
Felix Leiter: Jeffrey Wright
Mathis: Giancarlo Giannini
Solange: Caterina Murino
Alex Dimitrios: Simon Abkarian
Steven Obanno: Isaach de Bankole
Mr White: Jesper Christensen
Valenka: Ivana Milicevic
Villiers: Tobias Menzies
Dryden: Malcolm Sinclair
Mendel: Ludger Pistor
Daniel Craig's
first Bond movie and to give him the best start, the franchise is back in the hands of Martin Campbell, who directed
the last best Bond, Pierce Brosnan's debut, Goldeneye.
In the early moments of the film, the code-name Ellipsis is featured a few times but it doesn't form much more than a
convenient plot device, as are the appearances of the first bad guy, Alex Dimitrios (Simon Abkarian), his better half,
Solange (Caterina Murino), and the Bodyworld exhibition courtesy of the Autopsy bloke, Dr Gunther von Hagens. It's a nice
plug for his wares but he does put on a cracking show on Channel 4 every now and again so I'll let him off.
Before too long we get to the Casino Royale in the title, where James Bond will take part in a poker game of
"big blind, small blind" (pardon?), a venture that will net the winner a potential £150 million pot out of the 10
players who'll throw in a maximum of £15m each. One of the major competitors is this film's big baddie, Le Chiffre
(Mads Mikkelsen, who I last saw in
The Green Butchers),
a man who acts as a private anytime-anywhere bank for the world's biggest 'freedom fighters'.
There's clever interplay between Bond and Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), who works for the HM Treasury and takes the role
as the spy's chief squeeze in this movie. As they do battle in wordplay during their opening meeting on a train, she says
that if he loses, then the government will be accused of directly financing terrorism. Hmm... after supplying Saddam Hussein
with weapons for many years, what's new?
In Casino Royale, we see a more human side to Bond as he becomes entwined with the mind of Vesper and there's a
definite downplaying of the OTT action we've had in recent years, so no wristwatches that do everything, no invisible cars...
in fact, no Q!
There's also no Miss Moneypenny, but we are introduced to Jeffrey Wright (from the intriguing
Broken Flowers) as Felix Leiter, a character who seemed to die
in Bond films each time but doesn't get involved in any action scenes here and will return in November 2008 for the next
episode, Quantum of Solace (what a dumb title!) and while Daniel's playing at being a card-sharp he and Vesper
are aided by a contact called Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini).
The climatic scene proves that you don't need to destroy the whole world to create a spectacle, as they do a fantastic job
of that in a segment of Venice.
This single-disc edition has no extras to speak of. There's no DTS soundtrack either? We do get an Audio Descriptive track,
but surely DTS 5.1 trumps over that, if not the Dolby Digital one!
If you go for the 2-disc Special Edition or the Blu-Ray version then you'll get some featurettes entitled Becoming Bond,
James Bond For Real and Bond Girls Are Forever, plus the music video for the official song. That said, the opening
titles have their part to play in the playing cards-themed plot, but Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name" theme is dreadful
and easily forgettable.
There are a few trailers on the main disc prior to reaching the main menu, but when you pay for a DVD you really don't want
these shoved in where you don't want them. Put them in the 'extras' section. This is not the age of the rental video!
FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2008.
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DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
