Opinion: Double-Oh-Ho-Hum

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We are informed by the Beeb that early critical reviews ‘have praised [Daniel] Craig’s gritty and complex performance’ in the 21st official James Bond film, Casino Royale, which opened to big box office yesterday in the United Kingdom and is hitting stateside theaters today. In the L.A. Times, Kenneth Turan gives the picture a mostly positive notice, and other critics in the good ol’ U.S.A. are praising Casino Royale‘s grittier, back-to-basics edginess. Why does this sound familiar?

‘Brosnan was gritty enough to inspire fear in the villains while being debonair enough to win Christmas Jones.’

‘Dalton was edgy and gritty sure, but he wasn’t smooth and sophisticated.’

‘...Lazenby’s darker Bond...’

Since the first time the undead spy franchise began showing some middle-age spread in the late sixties, every new rev (with the blissful exception of the eyebrow-happy Roger Moore) has come in promising a darker, edgier iteration that will get Bond back to his gritty roots. By this late date, people ought to be embarrassed to be making the claim. What kind of lunatic goes to a James Bond movie looking for edgy realism anyway? For my money, Casino Royale isn’t a James Bond film but an Eva Green film, a showcase for the raven-haired Jackie Bisset type who singlehandedly made The Dreamers, Bertolucci’s boring piece of merde about the ’68 Paris riots, worth watching.

The 007 franchise has long been, as A.S. Hamrah observed, ‘about the obligation to soldier on when there’s really no reason to anymore,’ and the fact that people can still get excited over a change in James Bond’s haircolor is definitive proof that people can get excited about any old thing. Like tournament chess and the Olympics, James Bond has no meaning outside the context of superpower confrontation, but if they’re going to try and spruce up the relic, can’t they at least go with a black Bond? Chiwetel Ejiofor would have provided the requisite gritty edgification, but my choice would have been Tony Sinclair, the toffish Tanqueray pitchman who could have recaptured the Roger Moorish camp factor that is the only thing the Bond franchise still has going for it.