Brian's Thoughts on Movies

 continued from Part I The sequence during the break is most interesting if the viewer just focuses on Vesper.  She grows concerned in the elevator when Bond pulls out the gun.  This turns into full scale panic as Bond starts battling with the Ugandan rebels.  The stairwell fight is vicious and like Vesper we just want out.  As Bond eventually strangles the chief villain, Obanno, Vesper eventually finds the courage to help Bond disarm him. Campbell allows the aftermath to play out realistically. Bond, with a lot of blood, mostly his own, on his white shirt, tells Vesper to get Mathis to help with the bodies (giving her something to do).  When he fixes himself a strong drink and looks at himself in the mirror with a sense of loathing. Craig is terrific in this wordless scene. Bond may get his man, but every violent act is taking more of his humanity.   Little scenes like this make the film longer but enrich it greatly. When Bond finds Vesper sitting on the shower floor it seems she

  “So you want me to be half monk, half hitman”   James Bond to M in Casino Royale Casino Royale is my favorite film and like all great films, each time I watch it, which is only about once a year to preserve its power, I notice something new about it.  As such I have a LOT to say about this film and to avoid an overly lengthy post I am going to break it into two.  Casino Royale was such a breath of fresh air when it was released it is easy to forget the Bond series was hardly on life support before it came out in 2006. Pierce Brosnan’s Bond films had all performed well and each had something of substance, even though there had been an overuse of digital effects in Die Another Day (2002).  I had been a fan of the Bond films for over twenty years when I saw this film and the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service had long been my favorite, due to the character-based story.  In the middle of the climax of during my first viewing of Casino Royale I realized I had a new favorite.