Casino Royale - 2006

Casino Royale is one of the best action flicks of the (admittedly young) 21st century. A bold updating of the Bond brand it takes all that was noteworthy from its many predecessors (exotic locales, latest technology, bodacious babes), adds an edgier new star and tilts the proceedings in a much more realistic direction (though, to be sure, realism is a relative term in Hollywood). Undoubtedly influenced by the success of The Bourne franchise the film makers have upped the action and frayed the edges of Bond's formerly silky smooth persona. Daniel Craig's Bond is a street kid whose been given the license to kill and, as would be expected of such a situation, it takes him some time to get comfortable with the idea that killing is not the primary goal of espionage. When we are first introduced to this new Bond it's in a flashback before the opening credits where he recounts his recent and brutal dispatch of an unnamed foreign intelligence operative. The man he's telling his tale to is an MI6 traitor who doesn't get to finish his statement about how the second kill is easier than the first before Bond pumps a bullet into his chest, calmly remarking: "Yes. Considerably." It's a powerful opening scene that tosses sand into the face of 007 history while at the same time tipping it's hat to its forebearers.

Daniel Craig was a controversial choice to play James Bond. Many complained he lacked the sophisticated patina of earlier Bonds like Sean Connery and Roger Moore. He was too brutish, too ordinary, too (gulp) blonde! But while all those adjectives can be rightly laid at his feet the fact is his brutish, ordinary, blonde nature make him perfect for this gritty re-booting of the franchise. This Bond is an action star, not a martini sipping dilettante with a gun. There are no end-of-the-world stakes here, no cartoon super villains with diabolical laughs and no winking at the camera. This Bond lives more or less in the real world and the action sequences, technology and even the Bond/Bond-girl relationships reflect that.

After the credits and a short detour to Africa to introduce us to the bad guys - Mr White, the shadowy facilitator and Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), "banker to the worlds terrorist" and weeper of blood - the film gets right down to business with one of the most outstanding action/chase sequences of recent memory. Bond is on assignment in Madagascar tracking a mercenary bomber when his assistant blows their cover and Bond must pursue. The scene is a marvel of stunt work. From knife edge, vertigo inducing heights to bone crushing hand to hand combat and an embassy shootout the action is relentless, convincing and superbly choreographed. By the time the scene ends Bond has made himself a pariah by shooting his prey in front of the embassy's surveillance cameras and he's banished to the Bahamas to lay low while M (Judi Dench) picks up the diplomatic pieces. Bond being Bond though (even this new Bond) he can't let sleeping dogs lie and while in the Bahamas he hacks into the MI6 server and digs around trying to find out who was behind the bomber he killed. He research dredges up the name of Le Chiffre and the real chase is on.

After inadvertently causing Le Chiffre to lose $100 million of an African Tyrant's money Bond is entered into a high-stakes poker game that the banker has arranged (in the fictional country of Montenegro at the Casino Royale of the title) in a desperate attempt to make the money back before said tyrant comes looking for it. En route Bond meets the money person from MI6 Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and their verbal jousting establishes that she's no ordinary bimbo waiting to ruffle the linen with ol' JB. She's not the bodacious babe referred to above (that role falls to the astonishing Caterina Murino) she's a complex woman complete with complex secrets and she calls to the part of Bond that's been waiting for a 'real' relationship; even if he didn't know he had such a part within.

The poker game itself is both a chance for the audience to relax a bit and a platform for director Martin Campbell to spend some time expanding on the established characters and introduce a new one. Though it is a long scene it doesn't seem like it because of the care given to creating tension and the superb acting by all involved. By the time the film reaches it's climax in Venice we care about these characters and what happens to them. When Bond discovers he may have been betrayed by someone close to him Craig shifts emotional gears with devastating effect and his dissolution becomes terra firma on which to develop this new Bond as the series moves forward.

Casino Royale isn't a perfect film, but for my money it's the best Bond film I've seen to date. While taking its lead from the Bourne franchise it doesn't make the mistake of aping Bourne's hyperactive editing style and proves without a doubt that one need not go down that over-caffeinated road in order to create world class action. My biggest gripe with the film is the shameless product placement. There's a 30 second or so scene involving an automobile that could be lifted verbatim from the movie and used as a TV commercial. That aside, Casino Royale was one of the best movies of 2006. It both surpassed my expectations and reset them so high that subsequent chapters in the 007 saga may never quite measure up.

No Country For Old Men - 2007

If you're familiar with "Fargo" there's little in the Coen brother's "No Country For Old Men" that will surprise or shock you. Like that earlier effort it's violent as hell, quirky as you'd expect, and full of great actors giving understated performances. What is lacking almost entirely is a sense of humor. On the rare occasion when the characters are allowed a moment of levity it feels like they're just breaking the tension before the noose is fastened around their neck.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a down on his luck guy out hunting in the Texas back country when he stumbles upon the scene of a drug deal gone wrong. Under a nearby tree he finds a man who had managed to escape the carnage before dying of his wounds. Near him lies a satchel containing 2 million dollars. Moss knows exactly what's happened and knows that somebody will soon arrive looking for the money. But he takes it anyway. And we are thereby launched on a character odyssey, one far more interested in what happens when mostly ordinary folks encounter someone who sees them the same way Moss sees a deer through his rifle scope then in who winds up with the cash.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is the pivotal character in the narrative, the moral center of a film about amorality run amok. Played to world weary perfection by Tommy Lee Jones he's a man who thought he'd seen it all until he gets pulled into the quagmire created by Moss when he ran off with the drug money. As the only one of the principal characters with a strong moral center he's the only one able to recognize what everyone involved is up against.

Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh is what they're up against. A human terminator who will stop at nothing to retrieve his 2 million dollars. A black hole moving through society sucking in and destroying everything in his path. He's the embodiment of a kind of person that seems to be popping up these days with alarming regularity. If you have any doubts about this read some of the reports coming out of the drug wars in northern Mexico, the same area that spawns Chigurh in the story.

The good guys in the film though they inhabit different places on the morality scale are nonetheless on the scale somewhere. Chigurh is not. When he is forced to interact with other people he's capable of drumming up a pretense of civility if he feels this will serve his purpose. But most of the time he doesn't see the point. Give me what i want or die. Or better yet, I'll just kill you and take what I want. It's in those moments when Chigurh feels it necessary to act nice in order to facilitate an extermination that Bardem's portrayal takes on its most textured and menacing air. Anyone can walk around a set emotionless, Bardem makes you believe that stone face by demonstrating beyond doubt how difficult it is for this guy to say please.

As I mentioned all the characters exhibit some level of moral development and Moss is no exception. Though he stole 2 million dollars he can't help but go back to the scene that night to bring water to the one man he encountered who had survived, although he was severely wounded and unable to move from the cab of the pickup where Moss found him. In one of the most extreme examples of the saying "no good deed goes unpunished" agents of one half of the soured drug deal arrive and Moss barely escapes with his life down a riverbed. He knows though that those men now have his license plate number which means he is f***ed in big bold capital letters.

From here events spiral out of control with Sheriff Bell hovering just behind, off to the side of and generally around the various participants, never quite able to slap the cuffs on anyone and bring the affair to an end. Woody Harrelson plays a large part in the movie's second hour as a bounty hunter hired by one of the soured deal's investors. His job is to get the money before Chigurh does but he knows that won't be easy by any definition.

The movie's open ended ending is, I suppose, necessary in order to dispel any notion that this is a "good triumphs over evil" story. The closest we come to something good coming out of all the heinous events depicted here is a somber family reunion of sorts that maybe, just maybe, marks some kind of turning point for one of the main characters. But even then any comfort to be taken from this reunion is wrapped firmly in a block of ice.

No Country For Old Men is a brutal, beautifully crafted, wonderfully acted character study in which the characters don't take kindly to being studied. I'm not sure it's a film we needed, but it's not one you are ever likely to forget.

Beowulf - 2007

Beowulf, director Robert Zemeckis' re-imagining of the 8th century epic poem, is a wonderful hybrid of a film. Live actors are motion captured and CGI'ed ala Gollum from "Lord of the Rings" and their digitized personas stylized and dropped into completely CGI sets. Its the same technique used by James Cameron in "Avatar" and in Zemeckis' earlier feature "The Polar Express" and here it finds real purpose.

The CGI landscapes go a long way in helping the imagination nestle comfortably into the world of myth, creating a medieval Denmark of fantastical and impenetrable isolation which becomes fertile ground for the terror to come. I've seen other screen adaptations of the Beowulf myth (most notably Sturla Gunnarsson's live action film from 2005) and they pale by comparison in doing the job of setting the right tone. Something about actual Nordic landscapes that simply don't speak to the same ancient part of the imagination as Zemeckis' conjured ones do.

The story told here deviates from the original poem in several areas but you don't need to know the poem to enjoy the movie. It stands on its own as a cautionary tale about the dangers of hubris and the corrosive effects of keeping secrets while at the same time doing its post-modern part in deconstructing the hero myth.

The movie stars Ray Winstone as the bellicose hero Beowulf, Anthony Hopkins as the old king Hrothgar who has a secret that's come back to haunt everyone, Crispin Glover as the creature Grendel who terrorizes the king's mead hall and its inhabitants and Angelina Jolie as the demonic mother of said creature who, when she so chooses, is able to morph into the most seductive demon-trollop ever conceived in order to get her way. She is corruption, passing from leader to leader, spoiling everything.

The movie opens with a joyous celebration in King Hrothgar's brand new Mead Hall. But the celebratory atmosphere is soon shattered as Grendel invades the hall and tears nearly everyone limb from limb before disappearing in a cloud a electric blue fog. Hrothgar puts out the call far and wide for a hero to come and rescue his kingdom from the demon who hangs over it like a perpetual stormcloud. Beowulf arrives by sea to take up the challenge and promptly tells the king to open the hall in order to bring Grendel out in to the open.

Due to a combination of moxie and luck he manages to mortally wound Grendel in the ensuing attack and rises quickly from boastful outsider to demon slayer in the eyes of the locals. After Grendel dies his mother rains revenge down upon the warriors in the mead hall. Beowulf, sensing that he may be in over his head but unable to admit it to others who've now come to believe in his omnipotence, reluctantly agrees to confront her. As it turns out he was right to doubt himself because the needs of his ego are easily leveraged by her seductive trickery. He makes a secret deal with the mother and returns to the mead hall declaring victory. Hrothgar though isn't buying it. Having eaten himself from the demon's buffet he senses Beowulf isn't telling the whole story and when Beowulf dodges the question of whether he actually killed the mother Hrothgar knows what's happened.

He also knows that his beautiful young queen is smitten by the warrior from beyond the seas and as a last spiteful dig at the two he declares he's leaving everything to Beowulf, including his queen, and then leaps to his death. Beowulf is now king and has the woman he's been longing for yet because of his deal with the devil he's unable to show her love or husbandly affection. She thinks he's simply lost interest in her. He's trying to ensure that the demon doesn't rain whoopass down upon her and the rest of his kingdom. And this speaks to an important point. Beowulf is not a bad guy. He's a simple guy with some basic principals who was given extraordinary physical gifts and experienced some good luck. He's a braggart sure, and a sucker for a pretty face, but he's not out to harm anyone; he just wants some attention.

The film is peppered with references to Christianity that at first seem curiously unnecessary. By the third act though when Beowulf is bemoaning the fact that Christianity has killed off the hero and replaced him with the martyr things make a little more sense. It's also a film that isn't afraid to poke fun at itself though it doesn't abuse the privilege.

As a whole the movie is a compelling visual experience, and though mostly somber in tone it pulls itself back from the ledge when need be with well placed bits of levity. I decided against seeing the 3D version when it was in theaters choosing instead to see if the story would stand up in standard 2D. It did. Brilliantly.