Odd Bondage well done

Real spies don’t use secret spy surfboards, X-ray glasses, or crocodile mini-subs. Now, apparently, neither does James Bond.

The newest Bond film, Casino Royale, is a move away from campy spy-movie wackiness and toward gritty “realistic” action. It’s the darkest and most brutal Bond film I’ve seen, and that isn’t the only departure from the usual. Daniel Craig is the new James Bond, and he’s not a pretty boy like Pierce Brosnan. The best way I can describe him is that he looks like a man who kills people for the British government.

Casino Royale is a reboot of the series; at its beginning, Bond isn’t even a double-oh agent. It doesn’t take him long to earn his license to kill, though. Of course, in this film, Bond takes almost as much abuse as he dishes out. He gets beaten up more often than he gets laid, which should send Bond fans into shocked seizures.

The only gadgets in the film are tracking devices and a better-than-usual-stocked glove compartment. There aren’t any Pussy Galores or busty nuclear scientists named Christmas; the closest the movie comes is a femme fatale named “Vesper.”

With all this, you might think that the movie’s lost the essential nature of the Bond film, but somehow it’s still got it. Even without the exploding ballpoints and nudge-wink misogyny, the movie does James Bond, and it does it well. The film’s brutal, dark, and body-filled, and it’s pretty awesome.