Bond, Casino Royale, and MacGuffins

I just went to Mississauga to see the latest Bond 007 movie: Casino Royale. It was such a good movie, inside out. Now, this isn’t like me saying “Oh, Passion of the Christ was very good, or Mission Impossible was freaking good!” Casino Royale is a cinematic masterpiece, anyway you look at it.

What makes a good movie? Unpredictability, suspense, attention, humour, rationale, and good acting are what I look for in a movie, and this one scored them all. In the first scene Bond (played by the remarkable Daniel Craig) goes on a wild chase of a target in Madagascar, after the MacGuffin is thrown off.

The MacGuffin was well executed in this one, and it didn’t take me until the end of the movie to realize what had happened. The African guy receives a text message with the word “ELLIPSIS.” That was the MacGuffin. A MacGuffin is an object of a story that throws the plot into action; often, it is extremely subtle and somewhat detached from the actual movie itself.

After Bond’s colleague fails to discreetly capture the African and his cell phone, hell breaks loose, and Bond embarks on a pursuit of the guy, jumping across fifty feet-high structures, blowing up an oil-rig, and shooting-up an embassy. I cannot remember a movie with a more intense start than this one.

Apart from the MacGuffin, which came into play much later in the movie, the script was well-prepared, and Bond’s lines were as sleek and witty as ever. There were some good laughs, and it just had a bit of everything. I apologise for questioning the choice of Daniel Craig for 007, because he did an excellent job that really couldn’t have been done better. I look at my Swatch 007 watch, and smile with satisfaction. I’m a proud Bond fan.