Casino Royale (2006)

Ah, here we are, just days out from the release of the newest James Bond flick, Skyfall. Why don't we take a trip in the way back machine to 2006 when the incredibly successful franchise was being rebooted. A casting choice that concerned fans was chief among the issues when 2006's Casino Royale hit theaters. Ask most Bond fans -- including this one -- but those concerns were ill-founded.

Fresh off receiving his '00' status (license to kill), MI6 agent James Bond (Daniel Craig) is pursuing a bomb-builder in Madagascar and stumbles upon clues to an international terrorist financier, Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). The infamous financier is up to something, and Bond manages to stop his plan, but it causes another. Le Chiffre is now in the hole over $100 million to various terrorists he handles money for. Desperate and seeking his money, Le Chiffre organizes a high stakes poker game at Casino Royale in Montenegro. The biggest problem standing in his way? Bond, who with a $10 million buy-in from the government -- and treasury agent Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) -- has a seat at the table. Win? Eliminate Le Chiffre's business. Lose? Then, MI6 and England will have directly funded terrorism.

By 2002, the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies had all been played out, closing with the atrociously bad Die Another Day. Even with the progressively bad Brosnan efforts (no fault of the actor, just the scripts), fans still objected to the casting of Craig in the iconic role of James Bond, 007 himself. It's understandable. Everyone has their favorites, even their perception of who/what Bond is. What was the end result in this 2006 reboot from director Martin Campbell (who also directed the Brosnan venture Goldeneye)? A throwback but modern effort, encapsulating all the style and action that fans have come to expect while also breathing fresh life into the franchise. Big picture? It's one of the best Bond films, and easily in my top 5 overall.

Throw aside the gorgeous locales, beautiful women, cool gadgets and ridiculous action, the success of 'Royale' is simple. It's Daniel Craig as Bond. Yes, all those other things are there, but this is James Bond as author Ian Fleming originally intended and wrote about. At the character's heart, Bond is a hired killer; a brutally effective, even obsessed killer. He's cold, sinister and has little sense of humor. Thankfully, Craig doesn't go that deep. He takes the best of the previous Bonds -- Connery's toughness, a toned down humor of Roger Moore, and the general suaveness of Brosnan -- but manages to spin it into his own character. Handling much of his own stunts, Craig is incredibly believable in the part and makes a fictional character more believable. He doesn't feel like a cliched stereotype. Instead, he's a secret agent, sometimes willing himself to survive the hellish world he's working in.

On top of the perfect 007 casting though, 'Royale' does all the little things right. The first is that style that these films always deliver on. The locations have us bouncing around from Venice to the Czech Republic, Lake Como to the Bahamas like globetrotters. The look of the film is a stunner as we follow Bond's exploits. Chris Cornell provides the theme, You Know My Name (listen HERE), and composer David Arnold's score is a gem, playing on the familiar Bond theme with a mix of action-packed music and quieter, romantic moments. From behind the camera though, Campbell most importantly gets it right. This isn't just an action movie. Yes, there are boatloads of action (more on that later), but there's also an interesting, twisting story, quieter moments between Bond and Vesper that feel authentic, and that incredibly dark humor that rides along with the story. Like I've said before, it's the little things that make a good movie a great movie.

Now to be fair, yes, all those other things are very important to a Bond movie. But let's be honest. Bond is a secret agent, and that means A-C-T-I-O-N! 'Royale' is a great movie, but it's also a great action movie on a whole other level. The opening sequence has Bond pursuing a bomb-maker (Parkour/free runner Sebastien Foucan) through a construction site; Bond's physicality vs. Foucan's effortless movements. Watch it HERE. That scene is an essential one in showing how Craig's Bond will stop at nothing to accomplish a mission. Another highlight has Bond chasing down a hired gun trying to take out the largest airliner ever built in a ridiculously cool back and forth chase on an airport tarmac. The other action sequences are on the small scale, hand-to-hand combat, more personal fights that are effective in that smaller scale. All together though, they're a gem. In a weird way, the poker scenes are like action sequences; packed with tension and adrenaline.

And how about the rest of that cast? Green is not your typical Bond girl, but in that sense, she's perfect. Her Vesper is similar in character to Bond, making them an ideal pair as they basically hate each other for much of the film. Mikkelssen too is an atypical Bond villain; not one bent on destroying the world, just staying alive and getting his money back. However you cut it, Green and Mikkelsen are ideal casting choices. Giancarlo Giannini is a scene-stealer as Mathis, Bond's ally in Montenegro. Judi Dench returns as M, Bond's veteran MI6 superior, and doesn't disappoint while Jeffrey Wright is a new and welcome addition as Felix Leiter, Bond's CIA counterpart. In the Bond eye candy department, look for Italian beauty Caterina Murino in a small but key part.

I'm a diehard James Bond fan, but I am able to judge the flicks for what they are -- some classics, other good to great, and a few just plain bad. But this 2006 film -- the 21st in the official franchise -- is about as close to a perfect Bond film as you can get. It has everything going for it, and the capper is the final line, a perfect end to the film if there ever was.

Casino Royale <----trailer (2006): ****/****

Clash of the Titans (2010)

English actor Sam Worthington is at an interesting point in his career.  After toiling in relative obscurity on British TV and movies since 2000, the 35-year old actor now stands poised to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars...with the right part.  Where does he go from here? He was by far the best thing about Terminator Salvation and outdoing Christian Bale, managed to hold his own against James Cameron's CGI work in Avatar, and then followed it up with 2010's Clash of the Titans.

An updated version of a cheese-fest in the form of 1981's Clash of the Titans, this is a movie that was remade solely because there is CGI now.  That's it.  There's no other reason to remake the movie.  I haven't seen the original, never really having an interest in it.  But there was potential here if nothing else. It's Greek mythology, and it is nearly impossible to ruin that.  The gods up on Mount Olympus interact, controlling the world with an iron fist, the backstabbings, betrayals and hook-ups that a modern soap opera would be jealous of.  The movie never amounts to much though, a somewhat entertaining movie if nothing else.

The son of a mortal woman and the most powerful of all the Greek gods, Zeus (Liam Neeson), Perseus (Worthington) is saved by a Greek fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite) and raised as one of his own with his family. As he grows up though, a war develops and builds between the ego-tripping gods and the frustrated mortals.  The gods are ready to wipe out the mortals if they don't receive their due, especially lord of the Underworld, Hades (Ralph Fiennes), even threatening to release the monstrosity of a beast, the Kraken. The only option is to sacrifice an Argonaut princess, Andromeda (Alexa Davalos), but Perseus finally embraces his demi-god status to help the mortals win.  With a small group of Argonaut warriors at his side, Perseus heads out into the wilderness in hopes of finding a way to defeat the angry gods and the Kraken.

One of my concerns when I first started reading about the movie was some choices in casting.  As much as I like Worthington, I wasn't sure he was the right choice to play Perseus, son of Zeus. He basically gets to play the only character with any sort of actual development so he's got that going for him.  Like so many other characters though, it is only taken so far.  We've got to have a reason to root for him, and Worthington -- through his own fault or that of the script (more on that later) -- never really provides that reason. He handles the action sequences well enough, but I wish they could have done more with the main character in what looks like it will be a franchise with Clash of the Titans 2 scheduled for a 2012 release.

The rest of the cast -- without a ton of huge star power, not a bad thing -- is more hit or miss.  Neeson, Fiennes and Danny Huston play Zeus, Hades and Poseidon, the most powerful of the Greek gods. Neeson is the best of the three but is really around only to say 'Release the Kraken!' Fiennes glares and looks mean, and I don't believe Huston actually says a word (unless I missed it). Gemma Arterton is a bright spot as Io, Perseus' guardian angel of sorts who looks over him. Mads Mikkelsen is also a big positive as Draco, the Argonaut warrior who questions Perseus' status. A stock character, and one you've seen before, but a good one. His Argonaut squad includes Liam Cunningham, Hans Matheson, and Nicholas Hoult. There's also a CGI warrior -- a Djinn fighter -- who's pretty cool. Along for the adventure are two hunter/fighters brothers, Ozal (Ashraf Barhom) and Kucuk (Mouloud Achour), two very underused characters.

This was a summer blockbuster in 2010 so what should we expect from this flick? Action...lots of action.  Because there is no really good, detailed way to say it, the action scenes are both good and bad.  The potential is there with CGI creating all sorts of mythological characters for Perseus and Co. to battle (giant scorpions, Medusa, the Kraken, Hades' winged attackers), and the CGI looks solid for the most part.  However, the action is from the 'Let's over-edit this scene so it is indecipherable to watch and/or follow!' school of editing. Look it up, the school actually exists. Edited so quickly that the viewer can't see anything is never a good choice as a film-maker.  When the action and editing is slowed down enough where we're able to keep up, it's good stuff.  There just isn't enough of it.

Something was missing from this movie, and maybe it wasn't just one thing; maybe it was lots of little things.  For a blockbuster with all the makings of an epic, it clocks in at just 95 minutes before an extremely long 11-minute credit sequence.  That is not long for an R-rated comedy, much less a historical/mythological epic.  The look of the movie is too clean, too neat and tidy. The musical score is lacking, receding into the background too much where a good score would drive the action. Mostly though, I just never got fully into the movie. With a finished product that's barely 90 minutes long, there just is no time to take a breathe here.  Characters vanish as soon as they appear, and the ones that do stick around aren't given a chance to develop or interact at all.

A decent enough, entertaining movie, but one that is pretty forgettable in the grand scheme of summer blockbusters. Hopefully with the sequel, the cast, script and director actually get a chance to stretch out and get comfortable. The first movie certainly had the potential to be pretty good even if it ultimately wasted that potential.

Clash of the Titans <---trailer (2010): ** 1/2 /****

King Arthur

Few stories have resonated through the centuries like the legend of King Arthur. There are some who question whether he actually existed or if this knight was just the stuff of legends passed down through the years.  However you want to interpret the person -- fictional or real -- the names instantly ring a bell when mentioned.  There's Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, the Round Table, and all Arthur's noble knights.  So how do you make a movie about a person/character who may or may not be real with little in the way of concrete information existing on him? Here's a doozy for you. Do the best you can, and fill in any necessary blanks with battle scenes.

That's basically 2004's King Arthur which claims to tell the most accurate account of the Arthurian legend. One of the biggest issues surrounding Arthur is when did he actually live?  Was he around in the Middle Ages and the Crusades searching for the Holy Grail? Was he around near the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries?  Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Tears of the Sun), this action-packed historical epic goes with the second premise and does a fair share of rewriting when it comes to the legend.  This is not your grandparent's King Arthur with a romantic view of a vicious, incredibly dark historical time.  It's down and dirty, and everyone is at risk.

After serving a 15-year term as a protector of Britain, half-Roman, half-Briton Knight Arthur (Clive Owen) is ready to go home to Rome.  His men, Sarmatian men enlisted as Roman soldiers, similarly want to return home after many years of service while seeing their fellow knights drop one by one. With their release coming though, they are enlisted for one more dangerous mission, a trek into Woad territory (natives trying to expel the Romans) where a Roman family's villa stands.  Bring them back and they will be free. Arthur convinces his men to go along on the nearly suicidal mission, but even he doesn't know what awaits them.  The Woads wait in ambush for them, but news drifts down from the north.  A Saxon army (led by Stellan Skarsgard) is marching south, killing everything in its path.  Arthur and his knights must now band together with the Woads (blue paint warrior Keira Knightley leading) to not only accomplish their mission, but somehow survive and get home.

Historical epics are right up my alley, I'll give just about anything a try.  But with an action-heavy director like Fuqua and producer Jerry Bruckheimer in charge, you're going to get a ridiculously action-heavy movie that's short on story.  How often can you say that for a movie that runs 138 minutes? There is a ton of potential here because of the money clearly spent in getting the movie made.  The cast is impressive, the action is on a huge scale, Hans Zimmer's musical score appropriately epic, and the story is the stuff of legend no matter what pretensions the movie has about being the most accurate telling of Arthur's story.  But with all that said, it's a mess of a movie overall.  An exciting, interesting mess, but still a mess.

I'm not an Arthur aficionado who will complain about the mangling of the legend's story, but this pushes even beyond my basic knowledge of the story.  It doesn't have to be the romantic portrayal of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, but some of the choices here were just odd.  Arthur's remaining Knights serving their 15-year tour of duty for Rome are Sarmatians, a people from Eastern Europe with an Iranian background.  That's fine, but they all look very British.  Guinevere is a Woad, a Briton barbarian by all accounts who is an expert with a long bow and fights alongside the men.  By the by, Knightley in a skimpy leather battle attire is never a bad thing.  Merlin (Stephen Dillane) is not a magician, but a Woad medicine man who looks like a barbarian heathen. Skarsgard sleepwalks through his performance, and Til Schweiger is laughably bad as his son, the also-evil Saxon warrior. Now I'm not sure what was or wasn't accurate -- history is always open for interpretation -- but this one just went too far for me.

What does work is the portrayal of Arthur and his knights, mostly because the actors playing the parts are so talented, not because these individual parts are well-written.  Owen is a suitable Arthur, a commander who is not like his men but has earned their respect through his leadership and in battle.  His Knights include shifty and intelligent Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd), expert bowmen, falconer and scout Tristan (Mads Mikkelsen), quiet but capable Gawain (Joel Edgerton), young hopeful Galahad (Hugh Dancy), boorish, brutish fighter Bors (Ray Winstone), and ferocious man of few words Dagonet (Ray Stevenson). As a fan of men on a mission stories, I was a sucker for this part of the story, and all of the characters left an impression on me, especially Gruffudd, Mikkelsen, and Winstone.  I would have loved to see a story that focused more on these characters as opposed to such a large-scale story, but overall they are the best part of King Arthur.

Finishing the movie, I was more than a little surprised to find out it had a PG-13 rating.  This movie is VIOLENT.  We're not taking Braveheart violence, but it's close.  Battle scenes are incredibly graphic with blood spurts, decapitations, limbs being hacked off, and countless uses of axes, knives, spears, arrows impacting and tearing bodies apart.  All that said, the action is top-notch.  If anything it's too good and too much.  A showdown between a huge Saxon patrol and Arthur's small crew on an iced over lake especially stands out as memorable. The last battle is almost 40 minutes long and becomes tedious.  It's well-handled with CGI kept to a minimum (always a positive), and the action is done on an impressive scale, but it all becomes too much after the 98th stabbing or beheading.  There are only so many ways to see a man die.

King Arthur <---trailer (2004): ** 1/2 /****

Flame and Citron

Wars produce more stories than could ever be told in a lifetime.  There’s battles, campaigns, soldiers, generals, and that’s just the actual fighting.  Add the home front, the government, the build-up and aftermath just to name a few more.  Last year’s 2009 Flame and Citron deals with such a story that is little known and is a prime example of all the smaller stories that are on more of a personal level than a battle that could turn the tide of war.

It is a Norwegian film telling the story of two resistance fighters who became infamous for their actions and hated by the Germans, causing them to offer $20,000 for either of them dead.  Through the years, their names have been forgotten and even now with a movie released about them, details are sketchy on their involvement during the war.  Their names have become more of legend than fact, but with this movie, their stories are at the ground level; very emotional, very human story about the effect war takes on one’s psyche.

It’s early 1944 and two resistance fighters, Flame (Thure Lindhardt) and Citron (Mads Mikkelsen), have earned a reputation.  With orders from a superior, Flame and Citron kill Dutch German collaborators working with the occupying forces, and in some extreme instances, even German officers.  But as the bodies mount, the effect of killing so many people begins to wear on the two men.  Flame has little human contact with anyone other than Citron and starts to see a woman also working in the resistance.  Citron can’t sleep without taking pills while his efforts have driven his wife away.

But as rumors spread that the Allies will invade soon, the two killers receive orders to lay off on the hits.  Their superior disregards and continues to feed them names to take care of.  The more they kill though, the more they start to question what it is they are doing.  Are they actually helping the war effort?  Innocent civilians are killed as retaliation for every one of their hits.  However they feel about what they do, the walls are closing in.  The Germans have descriptions of what they look like, and the rewards continue to grow for information on them.

I enjoyed this movie on several levels, one being the actual science of performing these hits.  Flame and Citron are as good at what they do as is possible, and even then, there are glitches.  Flame is usually the killer while Citron is the getaway driver.  But even as good as they are, it rarely goes smoothly.  They discover quickly a person will say anything to save their lives, anything at all.  There are a lot of these scenes, and director (Ole Christian Madsen) handles them well, making them appealing to watch but also shows the effect their actions have on these two men.

The personal side is one of many levels that works so well here.  Flame joins the resistance because he has a hatred of the Germans dating back to an incident when he worked as a waiter at a German restaurant.  He was never close to his father and has no close friends other than Citron.  Lindhardt is incredible in the role, a savage killer who is somehow still sympathetic.  He refuses to wear a hat even though his bright, wavy red hair is an obvious giveaway to his identification.  Part of me wonders if he has a death wish from the get-go, and his refusal to cover himself is a way of daring the Germans to coming after him.  Flame is a man who struggles to trust because of his background, but also because trusting someone forces him to open up and leave himself vulnerable to being turned in.

The two men have their differences, but they fight for the same reason; because they think they’re in the right, and the Germans are vile, cruel forces.  Citron throws up uncontrollably the days the Germans march into Copenhagen and promptly joins the resistance.  He is a family man that sacrifices his love for his family for his love of country.  My only other experience with Mikkelsen is as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale so it’s great to see him in a non-villainous part.  He realizes he’s driving his wife away, but he can’t turn away from what he believes to be the right thing to do.

My knowledge of WWII in the Netherlands extends to what I’ve picked up watching Band of Brothers and A Bridge Too Far, so in other words…not much.  ‘F and C’ brings 1944 Copenhagen to life with a visual style of film noir, albeit in color.  The whole movie is full of color and a pleasure to look at.  So often war movies sacrifice visuals for effects in action sequences, but not here because if anything the action scenes are visually more interesting.  The on-location shooting is great as are the sets, locations, bad-ass older cars, and period weaponry.

SPOILERS Of course, this is a movie that can in no way have a happy ending. From the moment we meet Flame and Citron, it’s just a matter of when and how they will die.  Together they are believed to have killed around 30 German collaborators and officers, and the fact they killed that many in such a short time is remarkable in itself.  They survived in a country where their descriptions were widely distributed and known with the Gestapo and SS actively hunting them down.  This movie honors their lives and their actions.  Little may be known about them, but Flame and Citron fills in the blank spots nicely.  Norwegian movies aren’t usually in my wheelhouse, but this one is well worth it.

Flame and Citron <-----trailer (2009): ****/****