Casino Royale

*ing Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench

Like most other Bond fans, I've watched every Bond movie made so far, with the sole exception of the earlier Casino Royale. And like every Bond fan, I've worshipped at the altar of Sean Connery. I rate Goldfinger among the best movies I've seen. It was a perfect example of the Bond formula - gadgets, gorgeous women, a megalomaniacal villain, a great climax, memorable one-liners and oodles of style. To me, everything that followed it simply tried to repeat it, with minor changes and mixed results.

So you will understand how much it has taken me to say this: Of all the Bond movies I have seen, Casino Royale is the best. And of all the actors who have played Bond over the years, I rank Daniel Craig's interpretation to be the best. Yeah, even better than Connery. If you have a problem with that, go read someone else's review.

There, I've said it. Now I can actually review the movie.

After twenty movies, the makers decided to reboot the Bond franchise. And to do that, they went back to the superspy's origins, in Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, Casino Royale. It is an interesting move, not only because it gives them the freedom to break a few rules, but also look at Bond as an actual human being, not a lawn ornament in a tuxedo with things going bang around him.

One of the best indications of this comes right at the beginning, in a low-key opening sequence filmed in black and white. The editing rhythm, the dialogue and the gritty look make you wonder if you walked into a different movie altogether. You expect Guy Ritchie or Steven Soderbergh to make something like this, not in a Bond movie. And yet, it is effective in introducing both a new Bond and a new actor in the role.

The story involves a terrorist financier named Le Chiffre, who has set up a high stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. M sends Bond, apparently the best poker player in the service, to compete against him. Not without misgivings, mind you: Bond isn't exactly the flavor of the month in the MI6 right then - his effectiveness seems to be matched by his lack of subtlety. At one point, M says, enraged by his latest faux-pas, "Earlier, when one of our agents did something this embarassing, they at least had the decency to defect. God, I miss the Cold War!" (Thank heavens they retained Judi Dench - where would a line like that be, without her to deliver it?)

The first act, which sets up the plot, involves two well-executed chase sequences. Both longer than necessary, both saved by the fact that they're well done. The first one involving what is, I believe, called a "free-running sequence" is especially splendid. The last few Bond movies had crossed the line from live action to cartoons. It was good to see something relatively plausible. The rest of it is standard stuff - cars, women, beaches... no surprises.

The second act involves a lengthy poker game, interspersed with violence. Low-key stuff, mostly. Interesting, but not thrilling. The more interesting parts here are the interactions with Vesper Lynd, the woman sent by thhe Treasury Department to keep an eye on Bond. And for the first time in the series, you have Bond engaging in an actual conversation with a woman - not about plot points, not about trading innuendoes, but about each other. The dialogue, while not great, is a few notches above the pedestrian. Heck, one conversation on a train goes on for so long, I kept wondering when the makers would lose patience and blow something up.

The third act is where the meat is. For one, it involves a lengthy torture sequence that might serve to explain why Bond's definition of safe sex involves not a condom but a Walther PPK automatic (see Goldeneye for an explanation of that comment). For another, it spends a considerable length of time on Bond and Vesper. And most importantly, this is where you see Bond as a human being rather than as an action hero or a ruthless spy. You see him fall in love. You see him change. (I must add, in all fairness, that this is also the segment where you hear some really bad dialogue. There were moments where it compared with the tripe that Anakin and Amidala exchanged in Revenge of the Sith. Yeah, that bad. But if you can get beyond that, you will find that this is a pretty good concluding act.

Since this is a movie with more focus on plot and character than on action, much depends on the performances. Thankfully, there isn't any seriously weak link. Eva Green plays a perfect foil to his character as Vesper Lynd, the woman Bond falls in love with. The actress, once described by
Bertolucci as "so beautiful it's obscene", brings charm, sass and vulnerability to a role that has traditionally been ornamental in the Bond movies. She's given some phenomenally ripe dialogue to utter at times, but manages not to make you cringe too much. And of course, it does help that she really is so beautiful it's obscene. Judi Dench plays the tough-as-nails M as well as one would expect. Mads Mikkelsen is just about adequate as the bad guy, but since he's not after world domination, he manages to get away with an understated performance.

Which brings us, finally, to Daniel Craig. And to the question of why I consider him the best Bond ever. So here's why.

For anyone who is familiar with the franchise, the idea of a Bond origin story automatically brings back memories of the first Bond film, Dr. No. While Goldfinger has long been my favourite, I am quite fond of this one for one simple reason: it showed Bond as a resourceful, yet fallible spy. To me, Dr. No represents Connery's finest work as James Bond - he actually had to act, and create a character that audiences would love. After that outing, the last part was a given, and he simply had to embody the part. Sure, you can see him evolving through the first three movies, but these were mostly incremental changes.

Daniel Craig faces a similar, yet different challenge here: He has to create the James Bond who could've plausibly evolved into the Connery of Dr. No, and yet, he has to do enough to make the role his own in the future. It is to his credit that he absolutely nails it. He brings dimensions to the role that none of the others even suggested. By the time you hear him uttering the immortal line of introduction ("The name's Bond. James Bond."), with the John Barry theme playing in the background, you feel exhilarated.

There has been much hoo-hah on the Internet about the unsuitability of Daniel Craig for the role. Some even started a website called danielcraigisnotbond.com. Folks, I dunno what you're having for dinner, but I think humble pie for desert is in order.

Freeze Frame #2: Pride and Prejudice

I quite loved the latest Jane Austen adaptation starring Keira Knightley. I thought it had a lot of life in it, and featured a great performance by Knightley as Elizabeth.

P&P has never quite appealed to me as a book - I found it to be nice, in the way that Hum Aapke Hain Koun would be nice if you went into the movie hall expecting nothing. It was obvious that there was a lot of social commentary there; I just didn't find myself captivated by it. Watching the movie, however, changed some things. And it was this little, barely noticeable pause, that did it for me.

There's this twit called Collins that wants to marry Lizzie, and she says no. Obviously, Mrs. Bennet finds her refusal unacceptable, so Lizzie turns to her dad for help. And the dad says, with trademark wry humor, "An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day on, you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do."

Back when I read the book, this scene seemed to play for laughs. It's a good line, and conveys the father's support of his daughter at a crucial juncture. And Donald Sutherland is the kind of actor that can deliver a good line like that as well as anybody else in the business.

But no, what made all the difference for me in the movie was, after Lizzie has thanked her father and run off, and Mrs. Bennet has stomped off, the camera holds for a moment on Sutherland's pensive face. He has just given his daughter the support that she deserves, but in doing so, he has also quashed hopes of a financially advantageous marriage for one of his five daughters. It was the right thing to do, maybe, but not easy.

Freeze Frame #1: Insomnia

There's a scene in Insomnia where Al Pacino tries to get some sleep in his hotel room, but since it's daylight 24x7 in Nightmute, he can't get any sleep. So he papers all the windows so the light can't come in, but it still keeps streaming in through the gaps.

Background: Pacino plays a cop who has been called to Nightmute, Alaska on a special assignment, to investigate a homicide. Back home, there's an ongoing Internal Affairs investigation that might well lead to his doorstep. And to complicate everything, he sets a trap for the killer, and while chasing him through the mist in a forest, he shoots his partner accidentally. He covers it up by blaming the killer, but the killer knows the truth and blackmails him.

The movie is all allegory: Pacino is in a place where it's always day, and he can't get any sleep. But the condition referred to in the title is not of his body, but of his conscience. And I thought the scene in the hotel room brilliantly encapsulated it.

You don't see there, a man who can't sleep because the sunlight is streaming through his hotel room window. You see there, a man who can't sleep, and wishes it were because the sunlight is streaming through his hotel room window.

Freeze Frame!

This is going to be a series of short posts about specific moments in movies that I loved. Sometimes it's the way it was set up in previous scenes, sometimes it's the acting, sometimes it's the unsaid stuff that speaks volumes... mostly, though, it's me feeling kicked about what I saw in that scene, or what words I found to describe it.

The Holy Cow of Bond movies

I watched Casino Royale a few days ago. awesome movie, with a mesmerizing performance by Daniel Craig in his first Bond outing. There were a lot of dissenting voices when he was first chosen, but after this movie, I can't imagine anybody still objecting.

I have this long-overdue rant about Sean Connery as James Bond. Everyone talks about the actors who played Bond other than Connery, and the verdict, even at its most flattering, is that the guy was the best since Connery. Why is that?

Take Daniel Craig, for instance. The guy's delivered a brilliant performance as Bond in his first outing. he's given the role additional depth, and really made it his own. and yet, NOBODY ever
says, "He's the best Bond ever." Taste is subjective, and the guy definitely delivered a brilliant performance - there should've been at least a few who thought he was better than Sean Connery. But no, everybody tiptoes around that possibility, for fear of desecrating some superspy holy cow. I'll admit that Connery was damn good. I'll also admit that, despite my line about the subjectivity of taste, Roger Moore was godawful in A View to a Kill, no matter which yardstick you use to measure performance. But is Connery unbeatable by default?

Personally, even after a single outing, I prefer daniel craig over all the other Bonds *including* the venerable Connery. For me, the difference is this: Connery basically had to embody a particular personality, and you could see it evolving over time, movie after movie. Whereas with Daniel Craig, he's had to do a lot more heavy lifting in this outing - he has an actual character arc, an almost unheard of phenomenon with Bond movies. The guy has the looks, he has the talent, and he has the ability to convey the aspect of a predator.

Part of this is a matter of chance. Casino Royale was the first Bond novel - like a superhero origin story, it described how Bond came to be the Bond the world knew from then on - so it has a lot more focus on the character. But then, Connery had the advantage of being the first in the role (barring an ill-fated tv adaptation earlier to that), so it kinda evens out. Both Craig and Connery had their advantages, and they used it well. And at the end of the day, I think Craig did better. I don't expect that everyone will/should agree with me on this. But it's statistically
impossible that nobody does. that's what gets my goat.

On the new Don

Note: This isn't really a review. In fact, if you haven't seen the movie, I suggest you don't read this post, coz there be spoilers!

You have been warned. Now, on with the post.

Generally, when I review or rate a movie, I do it on the basis of the following question: Did it achieve what it set out to achieve? Not that asking this question makes my review any less subjective. It just allows me to love both Citizen Kane and Main Hoon Na without feeling all conflicted about it.

With remakes, there's an additional layer to that: How does the movie rate, if you did not know that it is a remake? And, how did the maker of this movie view it, in the context of the original? I'm distinguishing here between remakes and rip-offs - this post is about movies where the maker acknowledges what inspired him/her.

But with Don, despite the fact that it shares some major plot points and dialogue with the Amitabh starrer, I'm not entirely sure I could call it a remake. It's more like, Farhan Akhtar has taken some of the original movie's ingredients and added things of his own to the mix. And since what he has added is significant, you can no longer look at it as the same dish.

SPOILER ALERT!!

For one thing, the Iftikhar role is redefined. Boman Irani seems to be rehashing the same role up to a point, and then it is revealed that he has his own agenda. That he is not really a conscientious cop but a drug lord in hiding, using Vijay to eliminate his arch enemy in the business.

It adds an interesting layer to Vijay's struggle to prove his innocence, until we realize, right at the end, that it's not Vijay at all - there's been a double switcheroo, and we've been watching Don playing Vijay playing Don all this time. Nice little trick, that.

The surprise ending now makes you wonder: since the movie more or less followed the same broad outline as far as SRK's charcter was concerned, is it still consistent given the final twist? As in, is every one of SRK's actions justifiable, given that he is actually Don playing Vijay playing Don? I can think of only one weak spot: after SRK's escape from the plane, he goes back to meet Priyanka and tries to prove his innocence. Why woould he want to do that? As far as he is concerned, Boman Irani is dead. And as he mentions right at the end, there was nothing in the disc he gave Boman in the first place. So he might as well just escape.

The plausible explanation for this would be, I guess, that he wanted to get away clean - prove his innocence as Vijay, then stage his own death so that no loose ends are left. The problem with that explanation is simply this: If he wanted to do that, why did he reveal his identity to Priyanka through an oblique clue right at the very end? He was clearly smart enough to know that it would give the game away. Was it just him showing off? Or was it the writer showing off?

Apart from that, I think it's a good twist. And when you look back on it, you see a lot of scenes where he's given you little clues to the truth - like when he goes to visit Arjun Rampal's kid at the school and initially doesn't seem to recognize him, and so on.

But to me, the more impressive thing is the way Farhan Akhtar recognized a crucial choice in the script and chose wisely. Boman Irani reveals his true identity at the end of the first half. And until the major players (Arjun Rampal and SRK) get to know this, there seems to be no reason for this to be revealed to the audience. It seemed at first as if he had spoiled what could've been a major surprise by telling us early.

But here's why I think he did it: By telling us about Boman, and getting us to focus on that twist, he kept us engaged on that front while quietly preparing us for the surprise ending. The fact that
the man who we thought was Vijay is really Don, is a bigger surprise than the fact that Boman was actually a drug lord. By sacrificing the latter, he made the former more powerful. Smart piece of decision making there, I thought.

Review: Monster's Ball

*ing: Billy bob Thornton, Halle Berry

Stated simply, Monster's Ball is among the best romances I've ever seen. However, it is not a love story. It is about two wounded people reaching out, and discovering, in the process, that they are still capable of love.

Hank is an executioner at the local penitentiary. His father was a cop, his son is one too. The old man is an irascible bigoted sonovabitch who probably treated his son like scum when he was growing up. The son has grown up with the same behaviour traits, but you can see that he knows the words but not the music. There is a scene where Hank's son asks him, "You hate me, don't you?" And Hank replies, "Yes. I've hated you all my life." But he doesn't say this with spite, he says this with almost a sense of wonder. It's as if he just realized it himself, and is wondering how the hell it turned out that way.

Leticia is a waitress. Her ex-husband, whom she hates for the pain he brought her, is a convict on death row. They have a son, reasonably talented but grossly overweight, and that is a source of annoyance to his mom. The last time they meet before he is executed, his father tells him, "You're the best of me." Just before he is led away, he says to Leticia, "For all the times that I've hurt you, I'm sorry." You can see that this shakes her composure a bit - she was more prepared to go through life hating an unapologetic man who hurt her. Hers is a life on the edge of sanity and solvency - she's about to be evicted from her home, and she's just been fired from one of her jobs.

These are two people as clearly defined as you can ever hope to see in the movies. They are brought together by tragic circumstance, and drawn to each other by the grief that's eating both of them alive. After they make love for the first time, they tell each other, "I needed that." To them, it's like grasping at a last chance at life.

I suppose I should mention here that Leticia is black. It is an issue and a non-issue at the same time. Hank is a man who has been brought up to be bigoted, but an early exchange with his black neighbour establishes his level of discomfort with that particular role. His relationship with Leticia unfolds in such an unforced manner that he is given to wonder what the whole black-hating argument was all about anyway. You never hear him talking about it, but you can see him begin to build bridges in simple ways. This is not a man who goes through bigotry and emerges on the other side as a tolerant person. This is a man who was just waiting for a chance to sidestep his bigotry altogether, and Leticia simply provided that chance.

It's a quiet, deliberately paced movie, whose silences are as eloquent as its dialogues. Since this is a movie driven not by plot but by character, especially by characters who carry a lot of baggage, it requires the dialogue to convey a lot. That it manages to do so effectively with hardly any long, introspective passages is a thing to be seen to be believed.

The script is an amazing piece of work - it has the kind of depth that you won't see in more than a handful of movies in any year. It would take a good writer reams of paper to describe what some of those simple, precisely written scenes convey. This is the sort of movie any reviewer would hate, because he would have a million things to say about each of the important scenes in the movie and yet have to rein himself in because the viewer's payoff is in figuring it out for himself.

Billy Bob Thornton turns in a marvellously understated performance as Hank. You see in him, a man who has learnt to suppress emotion to the point where he doesn't even know how to express one anymore. And then, as his relationship with Leticia develops, he learns to feel once more. Watching his character evolve through the movie is like watching a baby learn how to walk.

And Halle Berry's performance in this movie - the one that won her a Best Actress Oscar? Let me put it this way: Have you read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead? When Gail Wynand realizes that the statue of Dominique Francon he has in his museum was the one built for the Stoddard Temple, he asks her, "Was the building worthy of the statue?"

And Dominique replies, "The statue was almost worthy of the building."

Review: Wonder Boys

*ing: Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Katie Holmes, Robert Downey Jr.
Directed by: Curtis Hanson

Grady Tripp, the narrator and central character in Wonder Boys smokes a lot. Not normal cigarettes - he smokes joints laced with weed. This is an important observation, I think, because watching this movie gives you the feeling that the scriptwriter was high when he wrote it. It moves slowly, everything seems out of joint, things get wierd before they get normal, and then they get wierd again... The wierdest thing is, despite all this, it makes a helluva lot of sense.

You see, while the specific events seem wacky (and I do not use that adjective lightly here), the characters aren't. They are consistent (even when they are inconsistent), often articulate, and we get a clear sense of where they're headed even if they don't. In fact, the slightly off-kilter tone only adds to the effect, rather than confusing things.

The movie chronicles the happenings in the life of Grady Tripp, a rather dowdy-looking professor of English at a snow-covered campus, over the span of a three day literary event. When the movie begins, Tripp is having a rather bad day. His wife Emily has just left him. His editor Terry Crabtree is due to arrive that evening, and is bound to ask about the book he's been woking on for the past seven years. (His earlier book, a critical success titled The Arsonist's Daughter, made both their reputations. The way this one is turning out, it might break them.)

It gets worse: Sara Gaskell, the chancellor of his university and the wife of his department's head, also the woman with whom he has been having an affair for a while now, tells him that she is pregnant. And one of his students, a delectable young thing named Hannah Green who also rents a room in his house, has a major crush on him and would very likely jump his bones the first chance she gets.

And then there's James Leer, his most brilliant and most difficult student, in whom Grady probably sees himself as well as a chance to guide someone to greatness. Leer isn't easy to deal with - he seems aloof, doesn't communicate half as well as his stories probably do, and is a compulsive liar to boot. When Tripp spies Leer standing outside in the snow near the Gaskells' home where a party is in progress, he takes him in to show him a prized piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia that Walter Gaskell keeps in a safe in his bedroom.

Why does he do that? I think it is because he is sure Leer would react emotionally to it, and he wants to see that. Then the big event happens. The Gaskells' blind dog Poe, which doesn't like Tripp much, decides to take a chunk off his leg for dinner. And Leer, seeing his professor struggling with the dog, shoots it with an antique gun he carries around.

This is clearly the point where a lesser movie would have turned into a fast-paced screwball outing, with professor and student desperately trying to hide the dead dog, and complicating matters further in the process. One of the pleasures of Wonder Boys is that it neatly sidesteps that route. What happens next isn't important, not from a plot point of view anyway. The movie is more interested in its characters, and so was I.

Every performance in this movie is a gem. Michael Douglas, who has made a career out of being suave and sexy, manages to look so unkempt that it seems like an achievement in itself. Watching him potter around in a pink housegown that probably belongs to his wife is nearly as funny as watching Charlton Heston play a Mexican in (the otherwise brilliant) Touch of Evil.

One of the important characteristics of Grady Tripp is that his cynicism, while evident to those around him, has not gotten the better of his amusement or his desire to be a good teacher. Bringing that out takes effort, and Douglas shows a willingness to go the distance. His is the central performance in the movie, and he succeeds in evoking our sympathy and our amusement at the same time.

Robert Downey Jr. and Frances McDormand have particular roles that require them to display an understanding of Tripp that goes well beneath the surface. McDormand's Sara Gaskell clearly loves Tripp, but has also pegged him exactly right, as a man who has lost the will to take initiative - that makes for an interesting dynamic. And Crabtree - well, Crabtree is something else. Intelligent, articulate, with an eye for a good book, and gay to boot. Robert Downey Jr. conveys his preferences in the plumbing department in such a manner that, it seems analogous to someone preferring Steinbeck over Hemingway - a matter of personal taste, not a lifestyle choice.

There is an especially nice moment in a restaurant when Tripp and Crabtree are sitting together and creating a character out of thin air, on the basis of a stranger they see sitting across them. There is both creativity and a parody of popular literature mixed into the description they come up with, but the best part of the scene for me was the easy timing. Hearing them speak in overlapping sentences, anticipating each other's thoughts, was a wonderful experience.

Of the younger cast, Katie Holmes as Hannah Green has the easier job. Given the fact that she has a crush on Tripp, she could've easily become a plot device, but she manages to make herself a little more than that. This is a good performance - not a great or a noteworthy one, but the sort of supporting performance that unobtrusively fills in the gaps.

And Tobey Maguire... ah, the pleasure of watching him play James Leer! His is one of the toughest characters in the movie. He's enormously talented, but he's also enormously moody. He's a congenital liar, but he also manages to tug at Tripp's heartstrings with moments of touching candor. And to top it all, he has a sense of humor that elevates the movie. Tobey Maguire is perfect for the part, with his boyish looks and a lopsided grin that makes you feel like there's a lot more to the joke than what he's just told you. While Douglas' performance is the one that anchors the movie, his is the one that enlivens it.

Director Curtis Hanson, whose previous venture, L. A. Confidential had people salivating for his next venture, has chosen to make a totally different movie, and succeeded admirably. He keeps the proceedings going at exactly the right pace (which, for the kind of screwball activity that goes on, is a little slower than usual), but doesn't allow any slack. He populates the cast with a bunch of wonderful actors who are obviously in love with the project, and comes up with a sweet ensemble comedy that manages to make us smile more often than most of the scatologically-obsessed, juvenile teen comedy trash products put together manage to do.

In its own offbeat, distracted, drug-addled manner, this movie manages to say more about writing and writers than most other movies that tread the same path. Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester, for instance, was also about an older writer grooming a younger one, but had far less to say, and was far more interested in sticking to genre conventions. That one was a product, not a movie. This one is populated with real people who have something to say, and say it beautifully.

Disclaimer

I have this habit of writing reviews of movies I've watched, and I'm gonna post a bunch of them, written over the years. But before you go on, I should put a little disclaimer here first. A long time ago, I wrote a review of a movie called Jaanam Samjha Karo and posted it on a mailing list of my friends from my undergrad college. One of them pulled my leg about it, so I replied in a similar vein. That paragraph is probably the best disclaimer I can provide, so here it is:

Leg-puller: General writing does not a review make, either. Hows that? :)

Me: General writing *does* a review make, dude. That's the whole point of a review - write anything, make a few literary allusions to prove your erudition to an audience that doesn't care either way, add a generous dose of sarcasm wherever warranted and maybe even where it isn't, and you have a review. Oh yeah, try to make it look a bit technical - add a few references to the screenplay here and there. Junta doesn't know what a screenplay actually contains, so they'll think you know what it's about. A few stock phrases like "tight screenplay", "innovative lighting" (with reference to some particular scene, even one that is simply shot in broad daylight) and so on add to the effect. But underneath all that crap (as underneath all *this* crap), it's just general writing.

Nothing like a good dose of sarcasm to brighten up one's day, is there? Now, on with the reviews. You have been warned...

So, what can you expect to see here?

I've been in love with the movies for as long as I can remember. For a long time, it was just entertainment. Then, at some point, it became a medium. And then, in some ways, a dictionary of metaphors to describe moments in my life.

I can still remember watching Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon for the first time. I came out of the auditorium feeling dazed, my mind a confused jumble of thoughts trying to grab my attention. Since then, there have been so many instances when I've been faced with a bunch of conflicting accounts of the same situation, and Toshiro Mifune's face would just pop up in my mind's eye.

This blog wasn't my idea, actually. A friend of mine, who has heard me rave about one too many movies in the past, suggested that I put my thoughts down in a blog. And I figured, why not? Maybe someone, somewhere, will read it, feel the same way, and smile.