WARNING – THIS POST CONTAINS CASINO ROYALE SPOILERS

Finally, the Brosnan-Bond years are over

I went with the lovely ThursdayWeld and ErnieMay to watch Casino Royale today. Now, I’d love to go for an entire blog entry talking about how much I loved the scripting, the editing, the music, the story line, the way they finally catered to their female audience by showing a little more heart from our favorite Superhero-Spy.

I’d really love to talk about all that for a whole blog entry. Honestly, I would. But I can’t. And I’ll tell you why:

Daniel Craig has about the most perfect arse known to man.

His face has a profile which I’ve heard accurately described as that of an Easter Island Statue.

ThursdayWeld, ErnieMay and I all agree, despite the eyelids which make him look like he suffers from permanent hay-fever (always a little red around the edges), his eyes are the most perfect blue we’ve ever seen:

OK, so perhaps they gave him blue contact lenses throughout the movie, but I care not, because…

Did I mention his arse? Or his chest, or (omg) his arms?

The man is, quite simply, the most perfect-looking Bond I have EVER seen. Even the baddie mentioned it during a surprisingly amusing torture scene – Bond is tied naked (!) to a chair, and our baddie stalks around him, saying “so, you like to keep in shape, Mister Bond?” ThursdayWeld made a comment which had me laughing even as I was hiding my face from the inevitable torture to come – “He so wants to shag Bond!” Can’t say I particularly blame him…

You know it’s a good Bond flick when they manage to make Bond cool, even during what is obviously an utterly excruciating and humiliating torture. I mean, it wasn’t like he was staunchly NOT reacting to the torture – he was screaming his head off. We all had our hands over our faces during the torture scene, it was horrid, but all of a sudden Bond says something to make us laugh, and we see the hero even more through the screams of agony.

The script was written with simplicity in mind, despite the inevitable twists and turns which go with any Filme-Bond. And I appreciated the way the story was obviously put together to bring in the female audience – without giving anything more away, the shower scene (no, it’s not what you think, get your minds out of the gutter!) really softened that hard Bond shell.

There were very few fancy gadgets, which gave the whole thing a brilliantly raw feeling. And there were blissfully few car chase scenes – that tired old theme makes me yawn at every action movie made in the past 30 years. I really hate car chase scenes.

No, this movie was about the man, the girl, the baddie and the card game. It was about a Bond who’s just a little more dangerous and ragged around the edges (the movie is based on the original book by Ian Fleming, and purports to take place *before* any of the other Bonds), but who still manages to make us laugh or smile in more subtle ways.

And there was … *drum roll* NO PIERCE BROSNAN!!! Words can hardly describe how much I dislike that actor. I lamented when it was announced that Brosnan was taking up the mantle of Bond, I sneered at every Bond movie which came out during the Brosnan years (slimy man, always gives me the impression that he’s a closet child molester – ugh!).

And then when they announced Daniel Craig, I danced the dance of joy. Not just because I thought he was haaaarrrt (I didn’t even know who he was back then), but because anything after Brosnan has to be some sort of step up.

And oh my, is Craig ever a step up!

Go see Casino Royale, my friends. Don’t hesitate another day. You will be pleasantly surprised.