Casino Royale Deluxe Edition, Blu-Ray Review

It only seems like yesterday that I first heard that Daniel Craig was going to be the new Bond. I have to admit to going to IMDB to find who the hell he was (I hadn’t and still haven’t seen Layer Cake). The only one of his previous films I seem to remember seeing was one of the Tomb Raiders, which didn’t particularly inspire confidence. I also have to admit to liking Pierce Brosnan as Bond, although I think the producers lost the plot a bit with the films, each seemed to be more spectacular, and unbelievable, than the last.

Casino Royale is the last of the Ian Fleming books to be made into a film, but it’s also, chronologically, the first story in which we see Bond. This raises a tricky problem, do they re-write the story so it’s not Bond’s first mission, or do they take us back in time to see how Bond became Bond. Personally I think the producers made the write choice in sticking to the story and rebooting the series, taking us back to see the Bond we all know and love develop as he becomes a 00 with a license to kill.

For those that don’t know the plot, Casino Royale is centered around Le Chiffre, a money launderer that handles the money for various nefarious characters. Bond, having earned his 00 status by completing two kills, unknowingly thwarts Le Chiffre’s plan to blow up a new passenger aircraft during its unveiling. Le Chiffre has bet that the company’s stock will go down, whilst everyone else is expecting it to go up, so he’ll make a tidy profit. Unfortunately he makes this bet with the money obtained from various rebels and terrorists, fully expecting the plan to work so he can pay back the money and pocket the profit himself. When the plan goes awry Le Chiffre is left in a vulnerable position. M sees an opportunity to bring him in and learn the secrets of a lot of groups MI6 have their eyes on.

Le Chiffre, in his spare time applies his substantial mathematical ability to the game of poker, and is a very formidable player. To make his clients money back, before they notice it’s gone and come hunting for him, Le Chiffre sets up a high stakes poker game, $10 million buy-in for 10 players, winner takes all. If MI6 can make it so that Le Chiffre looses then he’ll have no choice but to accept their protection.

It just so happens that Bond is the best poker player in the service and so is chosen to enter the game, win the money, bring in the bad guy and get the girl (oh yes, there’s a girl, haven’t mentioned her yet though). On this mission Bond doesn’t travel alone, Vesper Lynd, a rather attractive accountant, represents the treasury, as they’re the ones putting up the $10 million entry fee. She’s not the typical Bond girl though, she’s sassy and goes toe to toe with Bonds quips and actually comes out ahead in most cases.

Casino Royale was exactly what the Bond series of films needed. The last few attempts before this were getting ever more fantastical, with each film trying to top the last and introducing ever more ridiculous gadgets. In a post-Bourne era Bond needed to be tougher, grittier, more realistic and that’s exactly what the producers did and it worked a treat, this is the best Bond film I’ve seen in a long, long time.

I already have the early Blu Ray release of Casino Royale and it was a corker back then, excellent picture and sound and not much is different here, the picture is the same but the PCM soundtrack of the first release has been changed to Dolby Digital trueHD, but only the most fanatical audiophiles will be able to tell the difference. Where the original Blu Ray fell down was in the lack of extras, certainly not a problem here! On disc 1 there’s a picture in picture commentary with producer Michael Wilson and director Martin Campbell in which they cover a huge range of topics connected to the film and is well worth watching. There’s also an audio commentary with contributions from the crew that’s also worth a listen. Interestingly there’s a trivia quiz on disc 1 as well which covers all Bond films and for those that think they know their Bond (as I did) it’s a challenge. The BD live features of this disc I couldn’t get working, whether that’s my inability (quite probable) or that they’ve not been activated yet I don’t know.

As this is a 2-disc release, it means that there’s a while host of other extras (and most of them in HD) on the second disc. Deleted scenes, quite a few featurettes, story boarding, music video and BD live features again. I won’t go through all the features, but the outstanding ones for me were ‘The Road to Casino Roayle’ the convoluted story of who held the rights to the film and why it’s taken this long to get it made, ‘Death in Venice’ goes through the technical details of the final sequence and ‘The Art of Freerun’ a short look at the excellent free running sequence (that I love) near the start of the film.

If you don’t own Casino Royale on Blu Ray yet then this is the copy to get, great picture and sound it’ll be one of the discs you put in to showcase your setup, whilst the extra value bonus material now added in this 2-diosc release will keep you entertained for ages (and that’s without seeing the BD live features that will be coming out for it soon).

Film:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Overall: