Casino Royale Opening Scene Explained
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNvzNWuzI9Y]
James Bond movie clips: THE BOND 50 BLUE-RAY BOX SET: http://www.amazon.com/Bond. The opening sequence starts with an exterior establishing shot of an office block and text appears telling us the film is set in Prague. Soon we are inside the building with a full camera shot showing the desk, chairs and single source of light.
After the conceptual bloat of the late Pierce Brosnan films, the coming of Daniel Craig was supposed to be a return to basics: a post-bubble austerity program for a franchise struggling with its longstanding reliance on subprime special effects and gimmicks.
And the intro sequence here is extremely basic. Gone are the massive action set-pieces, the mind-boggling stunts, the beautiful women, the cars, the gadgets. Instead, we watch, in flashback, the story of how Bond first earned his “00” status — his license to kill.
But what it lacks in flash, it makes up for in film-school artsiness. The whole sequence — in which a crooked MI6 station chief arrives at his Prague office to find Bond waiting for him — is shot in hi-contrast black and white, with Hitchcockian camera angles and stark, shallow-focus closeups. It’s quite beautiful, really. But we didn’t come here for a master class in building cinematic tension; we want to see Bond kick some ass. Which he does, satisfyingly, in a flashback-within-the-flashback—but again, it’s a stripped down fight scene, two guys going mano a mano in a dingy restroom.
The intro manages the nice trick of highlighting that this is not only a new Bond movie but that this is a new Bond, one we haven’t seen before. Pierce Brosnan’s 007 had a family motto, while Roger Moore’s drank espresso and had an exclusive bootmaker. This Bond, however, seems to have no such upper-class pretensions. He’s a cold-eyed killer: tougher, meaner and a lot more rough around the edges.
Casino Royale Opening Song
GRADE: B
Casino Royale Opening Scene
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