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alexjcrowley · 3 months ago

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So, I watched Casino Royale (2006), in my quest to rewatch all of the Daniel Craig's James Bond movies and answer the question: "Do I really hate James Bond movies? Or was I just a kid when some of them came out and I didn't care for spy movies?"

I'll start by saying that I liked Casino Royale much, much more than I had expected. It's 2 hours and a half long, which today is the standard running time for any blockbuster, but lately I had managed to convince myself that, during my childhood, blockbusters were shorter and didn't kidnap an audience in a movie theatre for almost 3 hours. I was wrong.

(Now, SPOILERS ahead)

Starting with what I liked.

First thing first: James Bond. I was never fond of Bond's character, I have always thought him boring instead of serious, slimy instead of charming, and generally very annoying with the whole "I'm the man" demeneanor. I was also wrong. I really liked Daniel Craig in this first movie. We see Bond at the very start of his career, he has just been promoted 00 status and he has a lot to learn. He takes almost as many punches as he gives, he is too instinctive and his ego often gets his own way. He is far from perfect and many people give him shit for that, especially women. Casino Royale holds his main character accountable for most of the bullshit he does and that was a welcome surprise.

The plot. I am proud to say I think I understood the entire plot of the movie. I know it might not seem much a of a brag and I swear I can usually understand the plot of a movie- but James Bond's ones are often too convoluted for me. I feel like Casino Royale, partly thanks to chunk of explaination given by M, was fairly easy to follow. There were also many predictable twists- not necesserily a bad thing though, because they did make sense. I really liked how Mads Mikkelsen- brilliant as always in the role of the main villain Le Chiffre- was being hunted both by Bond and by far more dangerous people he owed money to. I think the movie lost itself a little bit in a the last part, but I'll discuss that later.

Vesper Lynd. I have no idea what the press conferences around Casino Royale were like, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them focused on a better treatment of female characters in the Bond's franchise. I was expecting to be bored to death by the umpeteenth only apparently hard-to-get woman falling for Bond's charms, and I am happy to say it was nothing like that. First of all, and I mean it as a compliment, the Bond and Vesper banter is ao3-tier. The chemistry is there, there's equal teasing on both sides, which makes it looks they just work very well as a couple. But the scene I liked the most is right after James Bond loses a really important game of poker. He goes out on the balcony, Vesper follows him and James asks her to give him more money, because he thinks he can win the next game. Vesper says no. James insists, in what you could call the classical "all or nothing" scene of a movie. The one in which the protagonist is like "you have to believe in me, I can do this, look into my eyes, trust me one more time and I'll prove it to you", sprinkled with a little more "If you don't do this, all that money" that he lost "will be in the villain's hands" and grasping Vesper's arm very tightly. And Vesper's response is not "Okay, I will give you the money to save the world, but don't let me regret this, James". The first thing Vesper tells him is get his hand off of her. The second is that she is not going to give him more money, because he lost that game due to his ego (a motif that had already been introduced at the beginning of the movie) and if he keeps playing now, he is going to keep losing. And then she leaves. This, and the dialogue in which she basically asks if she has to worry about Bond's breaking into her room and trying to force himself on her with Bond reassuring her he won't, were moments I really appreciated. The James Bond saga is not exactly well known to be fair to female characters and, especially, James Bond's love interests are often poorly written. They could have gone the easy route, they could have had Vesper trusting James blindly because he is the main character, but, instead, she stood up to him. I really, really like this decision. As James Bond has been cemented as an icon of masculinity, it is shown that not only even he can be wrong, but also that this is rightly pointed out by a woman. In this occasion, he's being emotional and illogical, while she is being the reasonable one. And I feel this is as relevant today as it was in 2006.

Favourite scene: the torture. I am not really crazy about torture scenes usually, but I really loved the one between James Bond and Le Chiffre. It's not just that the acting- especially on Daniel Craig's part- is phenomenal, it's what that scene means. According to my interpretation, based purely on how Craig played the character, that seems to be the first time James Bond has ever been tortured and you can see he's fucking terrified. And you see him going from terrified back to that mask of neutrality, even though it is now dented. There are moments in which pain slowly morphs into an exasperated laughter and James is turning to crude humour to deal with the situation because he has already made his decision- he won't give up the code, so he's gonna die there, if he is lucky. If he's not, many hours, if not days, of torture await him. It's a momumental test of an actor for Craig.

So, yeah, lots to love. Let's now move to what I didn't like.

The action. Not all the action in Casino Royale is bad, on the contrary, but a couple of things were simply goofy. Like the first bomber being a parkour God, especially compared to James Bond's clusmy ass? Top-tier comedy, maybe intentionally, maybe not. I know for a fact the dramatic zooms were not intentionally comedic, but alas. And I gotta ask, other than being the easiest way to kill off Vesper, what was the point of that last Venice action sequence? To me, that was really overdrawn and forgetful.

The wife of the first villain. Her dialogue about liking bad guys is very cringe and I don't know who directed Daniel Craig in the scene in which reacts to her death, but holy shit that's one of the worst sequence of the movie. At first he seems indifferent to her being tortured and killed, then M goes on her whole tirade about Le Chiffre, and then, suddenly, when she asks if James Bond can handle the mission, Daniel Craig is looking at dead body of the villain's wife doing the most exaggrated heavy breathing since the stuff you could find of Looney Tunes. And then says "no" in a completely neutral, and accidentally comedic, tone. Jesus Christ. What a shit show.

James Bond's character arc, a.k.a. the romcom act. Yeah, I know, I said I liked James Bond before. But I have beef with the way the character evolved. I would say I pretty much like what we see in 2/3 of the movie. The problem for me arrives post torture, when we are made believe we have finally reached a happy ending. Vesper and Bond declare their love to each other, great, it was to be expected. But the fact that a few days after that- at least it looks like a few days- James Bond is like "Yeah, no, I'm in love with you, I wanna quit my job and spend the rest of my life with you" feels very rushed to me. Sure, near death experiences really bond people together, but let's recap the events of this movie. At the beginning of the movie, James Bond has just become 007. If I am not wrong, Casino Royale is James Bond's first mission as a 00 agent. We don't know how much time he has spent hunting down the parkour-bomber of the beginning of the movie, but we know that something like 2 days later he is sent to the Bahamas, then goes to Miami, all in the span of 2 days, and then he gets sent to Montenegro for something like 3 or 4 days. At the end of the Montenegro section, there's the torture scene, so all we know is that he ends up in a hospital and stays there for an unspecified while (which he spends mostly unconscious) and it's at that point, after declaring his love to Vesper, that he goes "Yeah I don't want to be a spy anymore". Bitch, you have been a spy for less than a month and you have known this woman for 2 weeks at best, and I am counting the time you were unconscious. Am I the only one who feels this is rushed? Especially because, during a game of deduction he and Vesper played, Vesper seemed to rightly deduce James wanted to be a spy because he had a chip on his shoulder about proving is worth- did that just go away? Wow, James, you gotta teach me how to solve self-worth related issues that fast. And the canonical reason why James wants to leave the job is because it's "eating his soul away" or some shit like that, and he wants to leave with that little bit of soul he still got. Once again, bitch, please. You have not been on the job for one month, what the fuck are you talking about. Maybe it's because you're not used to have a job, Mr Bond, but every single job eats your soul away and you live with that, because otherwise you won't be able to pay the bills. Just to be clear, I'm not mad at the idea that James Bond wants to leave his job. I think it feels rushed and I think it's a little bit too obvious something will happen to Vesper at this point because there's no way James Bond is quitting the job in his first movie, but I would have accepted this change of heart from Bond if I had been given a good reason for it. For example, the fact that he has been tortured. To me, it would have made much more sense if James Bond would have been like "You know what? Being tortured is fucking terrifying, much more than I thought during my spy training, I don't think I can handle that again", I would have believed that. But instead, we got some bullshit on the soul. James Bond screenwriters, being afraid of torture doesn't make you any less of a man, I swear. All in all, James Bond deciding to change his entire life goals just because he fell in love seems the kind of shit writing the female lead would get in a shitty romance movie, not the one of the main (male) character of a spy movie. Maybe it's poetic justice, but I think James Bond somehow found himself a victim of what is usually regarded as misogynistic writing. He then regresses to the emotional maturity of a teenage boy who spends too much time on reddit when he feels betrayed by Vesper, while M has to explain as you would to a 5-year-old that Vesper, if anything, tried to save Bond. A very undignified main character arc, if you ask me.

Vesper's death. Why did Vesper basically kill herself? I genuinely thought her death was a Jack and Rose situation- they both could fit on the door! I think James would have been able to save Vesper if she only didn't lock herself in the elevator. The only explaination that I can give myself to that decision is that Vesper didn't want to live with the guilt of condemning her past lover to death in saving James.

I am not good at giving grades to movies, instead I will say this: it's definitely worth a watch if you're into spy movies and the bisexual panic induced by Eva Green and Daniel Craig will not leave you for a good while. If you're willing to be forgiving of a few sequences, it's a very enjoyable action flick.

Onto the last part: my quest to prove James Bond is aro and/or ace.

Why do I want to prove that? I guess if there were more aromantic characters I could just turn to them for representation, but I have to do everything by myself around here.

My reasons to believe James Bond is aro: as someone who, for the moment, identifies as aroallo, I really sympathise with characters that indulge in a lot of sex, but keep romance at an arm's lenght. I don't think they're shallow, I think maybe romance is simply not their thing, just like it's not mine.

My reasons to believe James Bond is ace: I think James Bond may have a pretty fucked up relationship with sex because of his job. His entire body basically belongs to the governemnt: it's a weapon to kill, a disposable dummy to be tortured and, in some occasions, an object of desire, used to seduce, possess and be possessed. You could pretty much say that a fraction of his job is similar to that of a sex worker. Far from implying that being a sex worker automatically fucks up your relationship with sex, I think being forced to have sex with people who you sometimes despise and who might want to hurt you or even kill you is not, like, the best thing ever. And also, while a sex worker can theoretically pick their clients, James can't. He has to seduce who is useful to seduce for the mission, regardless of how he feels about them. And, to top it all off, I like the idea of James Bond being ace because I am tired of the whole "James Bond is so cool because he fucks a lot and which man wouldn't want to fuck a lot". Maybe James Bond doesn't want to fuck a lot, or maybe he doesn't derive as much pleasure from it as people believe he does.

Okay, so. Starting with aro spectrum, even though James falls for Vesper, I think we still have good chances of him being aro, either fully aro or something like greyromantic. After all, aromantics can still, even if rarely, fall in love and I think, for the way the character of James Bond has been presented, him falling for Vesper was quite an unexpected/out of character thing for him. Him deciding ti quit his entire past life to be with Vesper...is truly just bad writing for me, but even accepting it, I don't think it makes him any less aro, because as I explained he could have had much better reasons to want to quite his job and, personally, if I fell in love with somebody after years of that just not happening for me, I wouldn't know how I would react. Maybe I would also call it a miracle and just roll with it.

About the ace spectrum, we see him seducing a villain's wife at some point, but I will be honest. That shit don't count. There is this moment in which the woman is like "I always fall for bad men😏" and James Bond immediately gets out of the sexy mood and goes "So would you say your husband is a bad man? Why? Because of his job?". He does a 180 and goes from wet dream to interrogator in less than a second. Plus, he seems to leave her without having sex with her to go chase her villain husband. Very professional of him, but also makes me think he was never that much into her as he made her believe. The whole thing felt too calculated on his part, I would definitely say he was faking the whole time. James does have very enthusiatic sex with Vesper, though. If I want to stick to what the movie implies, without going off the tracks with something like "he pretended to be enthusiatic during the whole thing but he was faking for Vesper's happiness", I may still go with the fact that he is for sure sex positive and maybe demi-sexual.

Well, if you have read until this point, I am genuinely surprised. You don't have that much to do, I guess, good for you.

Onto Quantum of Solace next, and I am already shaking: I know that movie is bad. I know about the writers strike. God help me.

#james bond #agent 007 #007 #casino royale #casino royale 2006 #casino royale (2006)#daniel craig #eva green #bondverse #vesper lynd #aro #aromantic #asexual #ace #arospec #acespec #movie review #movie analysis #movie

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munchflix · 2 years ago

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MUNCHFLIX - CASINO ROYALE

IMDB BLURB: After earning 00 status and a license to kill, secret agent James Bond sets out on his first mission as 007. Bond must defeat a private banker funding terrorists in a high-stakes game of poker at Casino Royale, Montenegro.

WARNINGS: Violence (sorta), terrorism, nudity, CBT. No...really.

RATING: One randomly bleeding, asthmatic, chess prodigy Albanian with Mad poker skills.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: All reviews are done solely for humor and should not be taken seriously ever. If you cannot handle cursing, crude humor and probably some offensive things, pls do not read this.

Munch: I get to go in blind again! I've never seen this because I don't really fuckin' enjoy Bond movies.

Biscuits: Me either, but we're watching one. Why are we doing this again?

M: Because you've got the hots for Mads Mikkelsen, I assume. This is only pg-13, why are we bothering?

B: I was gonna comment on that. It's not even really an action movie, it's just a movie where a guy goes to a poker game.

M: That's not very Bond, is it? Isn't he supposed to be like banging tons of women and blowing things up?

B: He does have sex with women for no reason, and I guess he does some other stuff. Mostly he seems like a chode who's incompetent at everything.

M: Movie starts all NOIR. I don't know what's happening. Bond is here and some other guy and I guess other guy is selling secrets. Wait, he's not even 007 yet??? What's the point??

B: He's about to get promoted. This is a flashback scene. Bond is played by Daniel Craig, who is a guy. Is he good looking? No. Is he a good actor? Eh...

M: I like Daniel Craig, just not really as James Bond. Would've made a great gay James Bond.

B: Listen, Bond HAS to be a straight white British guy or the world will fall apart. He should have been gay Bond. We have to face so much injustice in this world. I do really like the Bond credit sequence.

M: Oh Eva Green is in this? She's hot. The opening credits always look cool.

B: This movie isn't good but it's heavy on the aesthetic.

M: Is this Soundgarden? I hate soundgarden. Aesthetic can redeem a movie tho. See Coppola's Dracula. It's not great but it's DRIPPING with aesthetic.

B: Also I know this based on the novel of the same name. I don't care.

M: I didn't know they wrote novels! Do all Bond movies have novels??

B: Let's get the jokes out of the way! Bames Nond's having a stronk, call the Bondulance! And when I find the guy who James Bond burgered my sister! There, now I don't have to make them. If you want us to watch other Bond movies, fuck you.

M: I don't wanna watch other Bond movies, they're not really good. So now we're in....fucking somewhere....there's a war going on or something in Africa. There's a lot of people with guns. And like three white dudes and one of them is Mads, so who cares about the others.

B: For this movie, instead of making the villian some Russian super agent who kills people, Le Chiffre is a financier, so we gotta set up this whole complex process of him taking money from people and doing terrorism for...stonks? Why not just a bad guy who kills people?

M: Because! Capitalism is the most evil. Bottom text. He's got a cool eye scar thing going on. I love the evil stock market thing.

B: Evil stonks! That's his whole thing, and Bond has to defeat this guy by beating him at a poker game!

M: That's...impressively lame. I guess we're in Madagascar now with some other dudes who are doing secret agent things but not very well because they just got caught. Bond is just standing there while this other white dude is doing all the work. Is he training him?

B: They're going after this bomb maker guy. Secret agent stuff, dude.

M: How silly of me. A rousing chase scene ensues. Bond suddenly has a fucking industrial plow but this guy knows PARKOUR and he is scaling the building frame in record time. Bond also knows parkour. Now something exploded.

B: I think Bond gets this guy killed.

M: Three other dudes have already died falling off the trellis.

B: That's what I'm saying! He's not a very good secret agent! Why isn't Bond chasing this guy, why is his friend Virgil or whoever chasing him. I don't know if that's his name, I literally just made it up.

M: It is now! Bond is here now and he's gonna chase this guy off a ten mile high building rig cos that's how secret agents do. Isn't this kind of high profile violence for a secret agent? Oh parkour guy is fine, he knows how to tuck and roll. Ow. Bond is definitely not okay but really he is. YOU CAN'T JUST DO A FUCKING 40 FOOT DROP AND BE FINE.

B: Bond has broken like every bone in his body by now and he just busted through a piece of DRYWALL.

M: Aren't they getting tired? This has been like 10 minutes of constant fighting and running and parkour.

B: Uganda's first action movie! Parkour guy set off an alarm and now there's bad guys everywhere and guns.

M: Bond gets hit by exactly zero of the 900000 bullets being fired by the 50 assault rifles. Now he's holding Parkour guy hostage but not really. He lets him go as a fake and then BLOWS UP 30 PEOPLE.

B: James Bond's war crimes, the movie. You could make an entire movie of those.

M: Why do they have 80 year old Nokia phones?

B: This film came out in 2006 so....

M: Back to the Bad guy! French Mads is having dinner with some randos.

B: Blood comes out of his eyeball sometimes.

M: WHY

B: To make him look cooler and more evil. He's really good at math, that's his evil superpower. Statistics.

M: British agent kills unarmed prisoner reads headline. AND 30 OTHER PEOPLE.

B: Mads is looking at this like - this guy sucks at his job. Oh yeah Judi Dench is here.

M: I don’t know how.

B: She was in some bad movies, okay. She was in CATS.

M: Don't make me remember that. She deserves better. Bond is doing some secret agent shit with some fucking computers that seem way too advanced for a world with the old brick Nokias.

Hacking photosynthesis.

B: Geolocating, triangulating. You think the government would have this kind of technology? They can't even afford printers. If there's one lesson life has taught me, it's that the government is incompetent.

M: H ( who is actually M being played by Judi Dench but Munch is dumb ) is kinda pissed about the rampage of death. Bond is awfully sassy for someone who sucks this much at his job.

B: H tells Bond that he's arrogant and shitty and shouldn't be so egotistical, and he never learns this lesson. He's still arrogant at the end of the movie!

M: That's like the whole Bond thing tho, that he's this verr macho macho man who doesn't need oversight because he's so BADASS except this Bond sucks at being a secret agent.

B: Bond is doing something, he's very cool. He's got GPS.

M: Where the fuck is Q? Doesn't Bond need gadgets and shit??

B: Later. Did I tell you this movie is really boring?

M: No. Bond is tying his shoes and getting the lay the of the land for a long time, which does not at all look suspicious.

B: He's also bad at parking a car. He might have done that on purpose.

M: Just to be an asshole?

B: That guy thought he was the valet.

M: So he destroys his car?

B: You saw what he did to other shit! Bond immediately begins snooping.

M: What even is his mission right now? Watch dvds?

B: He's...secret....I don't know...looking to find some clue? Hang the fuck on, I just got a fucking email from 8TRACKS telling me someone liked my playlist!??! What the hell???

M: Who the hell has an 8tracks account in this year of our lord, 2023???

B: I forgot I did!

James Bond on his Nokia liking my 8tracks Fallout playlist I made in 2014.

M: You and this one other guy apparently. Bond is doing really boring shit. I don't even care. He's getting a hotel room. Whoo. Later we shall bang, beautiful blonde woman at the counter. Bond goes swimming. This is so dull. A woman I assume to be Eva Green rides by on a white horse. No it is not Eva Green. Nevermind. Bond has hacked into H's account to look up criminal profiles on facebook. Le Chiffre, banker...accountant. EVIL GENIUS.

B: Some dudes are playing poker or something. Bond is gonna play. That's important. A hot woman appears. She is the woman from the horse earlier. Her boyfriend is a dick.

M: Bond is gonna gamble away all of H's retirement.

B: Bond is good at poker, but not really.

M: He's probably cheating. And eyeing up the girlfriend. He hasn't banged anyone yet so we gotta get that 13 into the pg-13 rating. Mr Bond is EXTREMELY forward. Hey I know you don't wanna piss off your boyfriend so how about coming back to my place with a man you just met for alcohol?? Biscuits has fucked off and left me. They're just gonna bang on the FLOOR?

B: Sex! James Bond is so cool. Why is she like giving him her life story? By the way this character only exists so Bond have sex with her. I guess he's trying to get information out of her?

M: With his penis?

B: This is spy business!

M: It's penis business, she's going down on him ffs. Or not, cue phone ringing. It's the husband/boyfriend. He's leaving so they can bang all night on the hard floor. Are we sure Bond's not gay? He seems really uninterested in this woman who is crawling all over him.

Hi honey, your voice sounds way deeper over the phone!

B: No he likes banging women, he's a cool guy.

M: When does the next fight scene happen? I'm bored. And out of booze. There's so many scenes of just...nothing happening. More poker is happening and Bond is getting caught by the husbando and they're having a very very boring knife fight where neither one really moves. And husband is stabbed but it's fine, nobody will notice.

B: He just stabs a guy in a museum because he's cool agent guy. Someone has taken the important evidence he was trying to get? But he figures it out by calling the cell phone.

M: How did he have this guy's number? From his wife? Now there's an airport. *yawns* A lot of walking around looking at things. Trying to find the guy who took his stuff. So he calls H and tells her he'll call her back. There might be a bomb.

B: *sits in silence for 10 minutes of these guys walking around doing nothing* Oh yeah...terrorism I guess? That should be the movie summary.

M: Accurate. It's very slow paced terrorism but how exciting can you make evil stonks??

B: They're gonna blow up a plane to tank the stonks and Bond's gotta stop it but he DOESN'T because spoiler alert, he's bad at his job!

M: *sits in silence for another 10 minutes of nothing really exciting happening while Bond doesn't do his job* I guess if I found like...car chases really thrilling...

B: I don't dislike action movie per se, I've discovered, there's some I actually like!

M: There's nothing wrong with some good cheesy action but this is taking itself waaaaaaay too seriously. It's so fucking overwrought. Like....move the fuck on with your action sequence. We all have lives to get back to.

B: The virgin Jame Bond vs the chad John Wick. What's happening? Oh yeah...epic action. SUPA ACTION!

ON IS THE MOVIE!

M: I'd rather be watching Who Killed Captain Alex.

B: That's a masterpiece of cinema so it's not really fair to compare this movie to it.

M: That's true. I like Daniel Craig but baby doll....you can do so much better than this. Let some other boneheaded guy play Bond. Oh I guess Bond's getting arrested.

B: They think he just did terrorism.

M: Meanwhile the other bad guy is blowing up the plane....and himself because Bond...planted a thing on him??

B: Le Chiffre uses an inhaler. I'm really scared of this old accountant with an inhaler. This is your bad guy. This is the guy your government is going after. And that girl Bond was fuckin' is fuckin' dead now.

M: Why is she like...dead on H's lawn???

B: They’re at the hotel I think. H is like...this is all your fault.

M: It IS tho. Le Chiffre is an Albanian chess prodigy accountant to terrorists and he has asthma. He is already like 100 times more interesting than Bond. I wanna know more about this fucking guy. H and Bond have a rousing discussion about stonks.

B: Le Chiffre's biggest crime...insider trading. Btw, you gotta go beat this guy in a poker game to stop terrorism.

M: How...exactly is that gonna stop him?

B: H just explained it, when he loses all his money he's gonna be scared because the guys whose money he has are gonna come after him and then the government is gonna take him in because he knows stuff.

M: Why would Le Chiffre bet ALL HIS MONEY in a poker game???

B: He's...super arrogant. This is Vesper Lynd, our Bond girl.

M: Eva Green is so beautiful and she deserves better than this. So I guess they're just gonna get Bond into this poker game and he's gonna win because uh...he's secret agent guy.

B: Bond has to do some back and forth biting flirtation with her.

M: Bond is apparently also an armchair psychologist. Women love being psychoanalyzed. Gets them so hot.

B: She's right, he is a bastard. She's a good character because she keeps telling him no and he needs to hear that more. He's reckless, he's a danger to everyone around him and he sucks at his job. And half of this movie is just people playing poker. Cool, high energy spy shit.

M: It's not even that interesting when they do the spy shit.

B: He never stops trying to fuck her.

M: Bond apparently only likes married women.

B: Like I said, he's kind of a chode.

M: How did they arrange this game if Le Chiffre knows who Bond is? They were just like, hey we're gonna try and entrap you, you mind?

B: It was already going on and they inserted Bond into it.

M: But if Le Chiffre KNOWS who he is and where he's from then.....

B: Look...the plot makes perfect sense. It just does.

M: WE AREN'T EVEN HALFWAY THROUGH. What the fuck else is gonna build the action for another hour??? We're leading up to a poker game!

B: There is no action. Only poker. Oh yeah Mathis is a character, he's not that important. Bond tells Vesper she needs to look hot for spy reasons so she can distract the other players. Bond assumes MI6 doesn't know his measurements, even though they have a tracking chip in his arm.

M: Seems like a shitty decision for a secret agent to allow a tracking chip....but that's just me. Are you serious about the poker game going on for an hour?? Oh my god. Oh Le Chiffre knows everything. So...okay.

B: This is important, this whole password thing. Sort of.

M: They get to make a password so they can wire the money anywhere in the world or some shit but...

B: It's just so they have an excuse for Le Chiffre not to kill Bond immediately later.

M: But no spoilers.

B: This is where Mads spends a lot of time smouldering.

M: Well...he's good at it. He's the most interesting thing in this movie anyway.

B: Sorry your back is tired from carrying this whole movie, king.

M: The last Craig Bond movie I saw was that one with Javier Bardem as the villian and he carried the entire movie too. They should just make Bond villian movies.

B: Bond was too busy looking at boobies to make a bet.

M: I too, have been distracted by Eva Green's boobs, and unfortunately for you, I guess we do not get to see Mads’ boobies.

B: We do not.

M: Meester Bohnd.

B: This shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but the dealer keeps taking the player's cards and mixing them back in with the cards on the table, which like?? Why would you do that, don’t do that.

M: No cheating here.

B: They assume the audience doesn't know anything about poker, which they probably don't, but...

M: We gotta take a break so Bond can assault Lynn as some way of pretending he knows that Le Chiffre is bluffing but he's wrong.

Just...something happen! Please!

B: He doesn't know shit, he doesn't know that Le Chiffre is bluffing and Matthus's entire role is to tell the audience things and I hate him. I just want two hours of Mads sitting at a poker table in a beautiful building looking angry. Bond plants a tracking mechanism in Le Chiffre's INHALER which is a little ableist, I gotta tell you.

M: It's kinda fucked up. But then....I don't know why they don't just...kill him and instead decided to risk everything on some dumb high stakes poker game.

B: We gotta take this scene now to show these guys who are attacking Le Chiffre for not having their money but he should have the money! He just won like 4 billion on stock terrorism!

M: How the fuck is this guy in the hole to all these people when he's doing all this fucking underground evil money making?!

B: How do they even know where he is?

Yeah these guys are basically just a plot device, what can ya do.

M: They also put a tracker in his inhaler.

B: He takes the medication thing out and it's just full of tracking bugs. He also doesn't care if you hack his girlfriend into pieces.

M: Is Bond gonna fucking rescue the bad guy? Who is not actually that bad of a guy after all?

B: No but he's gonna kill people for no reason. Saving Le Chiffre would've been a very interesting plot twist!

M: They don't have the balls to do anything that interesting.

B: These guys are gonna shoot at him for...overhearing I guess and they're gonna fight in a stairwell because that's cool. (Editor’s note: Isn’t Bond killing the guys who want money from Le Chiffre kinda antithetical to their whole mission...?)(Editor’s editor note: Yes, but as you pointed out earlier, the plot makes perfect sense, it just does.)

M: He's gonna look really beat up when he gets back to the table.

B: Damn, what happened to you?? Oh I had sex with my wife so hard all this blood came out of my face because I'm so cool.

M: Bond is like...Vesper...go tell Matthus to get rid of all these bodies. What the fuck.

B: We gotta be reminded that Daniel Craig is buff and has abs. He's not really my type but he does have big titties.

M: He's old enough....

B: I'm not gonna respond to that.

M: You don't need to. Your old man thirst is well documented on this blog.

B: Le Chiffre is also fine after his horrific incident of terror.

M: I hope this doesn't affect his poker playing!

B: We're taking a break from the poker now because Vesper is traumatized and is sitting in a shower in her evening gown. This is like the one nice moment where Bond is trying to like...comfort her and maybe he's not a complete douchebag. But then he goes right back to being a douche.

Buck up, little camper.

M: He's sucking on her fingers so....yeah.

B: Just kidding, he was being horny the whole time. This your man?

M: Is there a point to that scene? Are we supposed to think he's a kinder gentler Bond....why has this game paused for the entire night???

B: It's like a tournament that goes on for several days...I think. Matthus just frames some rando for the murders in the stairwell.

M: That's fucked up. Mads stares deeply out a window.

B: Absolutely serving cunt.

M: The worst part is...the poker game is more interesting to me than anything else that's happened in this entire movie.

B: Bames Nond is gonna up the stakes because he thinks he knows when Le Chiffre is bluffing.

M: They're playing it up by making it look like Le Chiffre has all these tells by touching his temples and shit but come on. This guy is a chess prodigy.

B: And then Le Chiffre goes ALL IN so that Bond has to go all in to match him. And now we're gonna have to pause for a minute so I can rant.

M: Four of a kind beats a full house motherfucker. Okay rant away.

B: Bond bet all his money so now he's broke and he's like, hey Vesper you and the accountant people need to give me more money! And they're like no, which is the correct response, because all he's done is LOSE! He's just demonstrated that he's really bad at poker! But then THIS OTHER GUY who was there at the poker table, who has not been important yet at all, is like "Hey I'm from the CIA and I'll buy you back into the game" - like WHAT. MY MAN. Also ensuring that James Bond receives ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCES for his fucking failure!

M: Also, Bond just decides he's gonna kill Le Chiffre - with a fucking kitchen knife. But CIA guy stops him.

B: 007, Consequences. That doesn't sound like a very good movie, does it? But then Le Chiffre's girlfriend who kinda looks like Britney Spears poisons Bond's martini.

M: But why, he already lost all his money and he didn't actually attack Le Chiffre so....

B: He unlost tho so....she decided to give him consequences. It was just a drop of consequence poisoning.

M: Bond runs to the bathroom to barf and sweat and then go to his car in the middle of the game, which seems like it would also have consequences but that's where all his cool gadgets are so he can be like oh no I've been poisoned.

When will you learn?? When will you learn that your actions have CONSEQUENCES??

B: I don't wanna have to say it again but...Bames Nond is having a stronk....call the Bondulance. They’re like...defibrillate yourself.

M: Why don't they just fucking call an AMBULANCE. Or a BONDULANCE. How do they know it's digitalis???

B: The chip that monitors his blood can tell that but he didn't plug in the defibrillator because he's bad at his job! Eva shows up and she somehow knows what's going on and how to plug in the defibrillator and save him.

M: Bond, poisoned about 20 seconds ago is fine now. That's not how poison works.

B: When you die, it removes status effects! Come on!

M: You don't suddenly like...have a heart attack and then be like, oh poison gone.

B: Le Chiffre makes a great ‘how are you not dead’ face.

M: Back to poker. Stop trying to kill everyone and just fucking play. Two aces on the table so that's big. Everyone is going all in. If Le Chiffre is not fucking STUPID he won't do it but he's gonna because he's a bad guy. Bond goes all in.

B: As we clarified, he's bad at poker, but he's trying to force Le Chiffre to do it too.

M: He has to lose because otherwise they'll stare at each other longingly for all eternity. What would happen if one of these other dudes had four of a kind? A royal flush?

B: But Bond wins the poker game with a straight flush and Le Chiffre is mad now.

M: Why is the CIA playing in a high stakes game anyway? Bond needs to get some grub. Which is fair.

B: He just wants to hit on Vesper.

M: There's still like...half an hour left.

B: The climax happens and then the falling action just goes on for like...half an hour.

M: That was the climax???

B: No that's the point that's coming up. That's when I climaxed at least. Vesper is like, don't you even care that you murdered two people?

M: And Bond is like, I've killed way more people than that. Oh shit....Matthus. He might be in danger!

B: Actually he was a double agent! He was working for the bad guy the whole time! And Bond runs after a moving car. He's gotta get in his cooler car.

M: Is this gonna be another 20 minute long chase scene? I'm sorry but there's NO WAY he somehow swerved to miss hitting Vesper tied up in the middle of the road also how did they get here there that fast?

Bond is definitely very alive after this, trust us.

B: Bond wrecks the ever loving shit out of his car and he is now dead. They have Bond now and they gotta get the tracking chip out of his arm. I guess they knew about it because of Matthus. Time for your ball flattening.

M: *dies laughing* Ouch.

B: I'm not kidding!

M: Oh this is a real thing?!

B: Dude this is the cock and ball torture scene!

M: You didn't say anything about a fucking CBT scene!!!

B: I thought everyone knew that happened!

M: NO. We're gonna have to put a CBT warning. I don't wanna see this! Oh god. Bond is naked and strapped to a chair with the base cut out and Le Chiffre is carrying a big rope and uh....

B: Le Chiffre has to sensually tell Bond he's taken good care of his body. All of Bond's villians are gay coded, they have been for ages, it's fine, nobody’s mad.

M: Hannibal training. I really don't need to see this happening. Is this where the pg13 rating comes in?

B: Is this an inappropriate time to say God I wish that were me?

M: YES. He just whacked Bond in the nuts with a huge rope.

B: Thank you daddy, may I have another? I wanna be whoever had to spray Mads to make him that greasy. Man is fucking lubricated.

M: Bond is screaming though, as anyone would be. But he's trying to be cool about having his balls decimated. Le Chiffre has a point tho.....even if he kills Bond, MI6 would still welcome him because he knows too much stuff. Much better terrorist tactic, threaten Vesper.

B: Is little mister Bond gonna tell Daddy the password, or is he gonna keep being a naughty boy?

Man, 50 Shades of Grey looking better than I remember

M: I don't know you.

B: Just in time to save Bond's balls, it's some guy! With a gun! Honestly it would’ve been a very bold move to make it canon that Bond loses his balls. But that doesn't happen. The world wasn't ready for gay, ball-less, villian rescuing James Bond.

M: They weren't even ready for a black Bond, do you remember the hate toward Idris Elba??? They would never let us remove Bond's Balls. Oh yeah....Le Chiffre is dead.

B: Matthus is actually like...a triple agent? He was working for them but now he's not really? Or maybe he is. He's just a plot device.

M: I have no idea. They just tased him.

B: I stopped watching after this point the first time because Mads was dead and all I wanted was him sitting there looking mad at a poker table.

M: Vesper is here and she's gonna make Bond feel all better, and I wanna know how he thinks he's gonna bone her when his balls are the size of grapefruits.

B: This man's testicles are wrecked right now. But because of trauma bonding, they're totally into each other right now. Speaking of people who don't have balls...it's my cat!

M: Hi kitty. They should have Bond sitting there with a giant ice pack on his lap. Vesper suddenly is like, I love you even without your balls. WHY.

B: Dude....

M: Bond is like, I have no armor. You must love me now. I love you. I have no balls. This is the fucking movie, friends. Are we really supposed to believe Names Bond is gonna settle down???

B: Sex mode activated!

M: He's pretty motivated for a dude with a hospital bed in his room.

B: We must be reminded that Daniel Craig is buff. Every Bond actor is like someone your mom thinks is hot.

So you’re a buff guy, like it really rough guy, just can’t get enough guy

M: My mom definitely thinks Daniel Craig is hot. He's okay.

B: I think Vesper double crosses him actually.

M: Good. He's got it coming.

B: I'm ready to quit my job and travel the world with you, woman I've known for two days. He's acting like he's gonna quit because being a secret agent is so hard on him emotionally. He's resigning, but not really.

M: I think he's just afraid for his balls. Which is fair. Why isn't this over yet? The bad guy is dead.

B: We gotta set up for the next movie. He always looks like such a goober when he's not in his sleek spy suit. Why would his employer want him to come back?? He failed at everything.

M: He didn't even take out the bad guy. Le Chiffre is dead but that's not what they wanted, they wanted him alive.

B: Everything went wrong except that Bond is cool now and he gets to fuck a woman half his age.

M: Ooooh H wants to know where the monies are, and Bond is like...oshit...is Vesper stealing all the money?? Uh oh. Now MI6 is gonna kick your ass. To be fair, if I was Vesper...I would've done the same thing. Fuck this guy.

B: She's being manipulated by some secret organization because she couldn't have done this of her own free will because woman.

M: That's way less interesting.

B: I thought it was gonna turn out the person she'd been in love with was Le Chiffre but no. He doesn't like women that much.

M: I like my version better where she's just like, you know what Bond, you're a lying sack of shit with huge swollen balls and I'm taking your monies.

B: We gotta have one more action scene because otherwise the board would be like no we need more shoot gun explosion action.

M: Boo. This should have ended like an hour ago.

B: The falling action goes on forever. They had to set up the next movie instead of being like hey Bond your next mission is to go to Costa Rica and fuck some dudes in the ass! Except more British.

M: He's gotta cause enough property damage to negate all the money MI6 would've gotten back.

Listen, blowing up that building was just a goof!

B: This might be more than that. He's levelling buildings. Daniel Craig does have extremely blue eyes. They are very pretty. Nice titties and very blue eyes.

M: The bar is so low. He's like...perpetually doing duckface tho as his natural expression. I don't even know what's happening, stuff is just exploding. Vesper might be drowning, there's a lot of dust and gunfire. I assume Bond will come out on top. Oh he's gonna rescue Vesper? Or not. She's gonna commit aliven't??

B: Secret agent stuff? I guess? Some kind of thing.

M: This makes no sense.

B: That's implying the rest of the movie did make sense. No, don't try to save me. I love you, let me drown to death. She just exhaled so much, she would be drowning already, so would he.

M: She does tho and he's fine, despite all of his exhalation.

B: He might not be good at his job but he's got the lung capacity of a seal.

M: Somehow he got her out of the water and now he's doing the sexiest version of rescue breathing I've ever seen, wherein he doesn't even exhale and just makes out with her corpse.

B: We don't really feel bad for him tho because as we've clarified, he's kind of an asshole, and we don't feel bad for her because she mostly existed for him to bang.

M: And now M has to explain that Vesper had a boyfriend but they kidnapped him and were threatening to kill him so...that's kinda fucked up. Bond is like, NO I DON'T CARE ANYMORE SHE WAS A BITCH.

B: He's acting like a 10 year old. Now we'll never know who was behind all this because you fucked it all up, Bond. Don't worry, he'll fall in love with a different woman in the next movie.

M: I'm literally just waiting for this fucking movie to end. It won't end. They keep adding random shit that means nothing. There's another criminal fucking organization behind everything and we donut care at all. Some other guy just got shot by Bond. BLARG. I don't really have any closing thoughts uh....Bond really sucks now. Like...either stick to your guns and make him this utterly dehumanizing super macho bullshit strong dude or don't. But don't fucking go back and forth with it the whole movie. It's annoying as hell. The villian was 10000 times more interesting.

B: James Bond? More like LAMES BOND.

M: Parfait.

Munch and Biscuits out, yo.

#james bond #names bond #007 #munchflix #casino royale #review #humor #mads mikkleson #mads mikkelsen #eva green #judi dench #daniel craig

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