I didn’t get that impression. Bond lost the hand on the River through chance and concluded that Le Chiffre was bluffing (since up until that fluke win he’d had a weak hand) and the blood-tear was the tell. It’s actually rather premature for Bond to link the two after just one hand. Really spotting a tell should require closely observing a player across multiple hands. Maybe the blood-tears come randomly.
Of course, what I would have liked is for Bond and Le Chiffre to be concentrating on each other so intensely, they completely overlook some third player who unexpectedly clobbers both of them.
And, sure, it’s not remotely realistic, nor is it reasonable to expect it to be. The game has to be condensed and simplified to be filmable.
I agree, but I can’t really think of how you could realistically demonstrate poker skill in a two-hour movie. Poker is a game where the best players grind down the inferior ones over a long period of time, and where you make a living not by winning The Big Tournament, but by finishing in the money over and over and grinding out money in ring games. So the movie scene isn’t a demonstration of quality poker. * But at least it’s a game of skill.*
For instance, even working within the ridiculousness of the movie’s hand, what if instead of having Bond luck into having the biggest monster in the monster vs monster hand, he had the second best hand? Imagine if he had top boat while the other guy had the straight flush - yet he had the judgement to lay it down (because of a movie-obvious tell or whatever) - that would show judgement and skill. He could then actually beat the guy later.
I guess that might be a little confusing to the lay-audience though “wait, he’s good because he folded?! We all know you prove your poker skill by being dealt straight flushes!”
It’s been a while, but I thought that the tell was Le Chiffre touching his temple? He does it later in the game, after he’s double-bluffed Bond out, then looks annoyed that he did it and folds.
Bull. They’re incredibly successful movies, while your old “fun” Bond drove the franchise to suicide several times over. Moreover, many of the best Bond movies were pretty serious, including Dr. No and License to Kill. My personal fave, You Only Live Twice, was adventurous but still pretty grim.
I’m so glad to see people challenging the idea that switching to Poker somehow dumbed down the movie. The reason more people understand Poker than Baccarat is simply because Poker is more fun to play!
I agree with everybody else about how unrealistic the game was portrayed in the movie. What isn’t explicitly shown is that for Bond to have won the entire game with that last hand he had to have the most money at the table. If Le Chiffre had more money than Bond, he would only have to match what Bond put in and continued playing with the remainder. When Bond earlier lost to Le Chiffre he had to buy back in at an amount signifcantly below Le Chiffres current winnings. He then had to keep his emotions in check and steadily increase his winnings while chipping away at Le Chiffres until he took the lead just before the final show down. It seems he learned from his earlier mistakes and played Poker well up to the end. They just don’t show that in the movie, instead focusing on the “exciting” hands.
Okay, I’ll change what I said; it would be hard to have a substantially more realistic portrayal of poker unless you actually made a movie about poker.
Would that have worked, though? He needs to clean Le Chiffre out. How can you clean someone out in a hand where you successfully bluff your opponent into folding? If he’s folding, it’s because he still has money that he doesn’t want to risk losing.
For Bond to win on a bluff, he needs to have a strong hand, that he convinces his opponent is weak. I’m not sure how you could do that in a movie, though. Maybe a montage, with repeated shots of Bond looking at a weak hand, then scratching his nose, or something. Last hand, make a big show of Le Chiffre noticing Bond scratching his nose, before he bets the last of his money, only to lose to a strong hand. Maybe Bond makes an ostentatious show of scratching his nose while congratulating Le Chiffre on a good game, making it clear that he’d been leading him on with a fake tell all along.
I don’t know if that would actually work on screen, though. It’s a lot to communicate without any dialogue.
What they should have done is make it a hand such as Bond with AH-KH and LeChifre with AC-AS (certainly possible) and then the flop comes AD-KD-10H, then the turn could be QH and the river JH. In this case there is a reason for both to stay in, Bond has high two pair and after the turn has an inside straight draw. Meanhwile Lechifre has three of a kind, so he probably thinks he is best after the flop (which he is), and after the turn he proabaly would also think at worst he will split the pot with a straight on the board.
While this is a very specific set of events it seems to me that it would be more believable for why they stayed in and still create some drama.
But had they black bagged Le Chiffre, his nefarious employers would immediately know the secret service was onto them (and/or assume Le Chiffre squealed like a Twilight fangirl) ; go deeper underground and basically sever all ties with their current fronts and activities. which would ruin any valuable information Le Chiffre could have given in the first place.
Since getting him into something akin to witness protection was the plan all along, I fail to see why this wouldn’t happen anyway, nor is there any indication this kind of severing has occurred to M as a potential problem.
Except that the recent Craig films haven’t just returned to the literary sources (if indeed that could be said, as they diverge significantly from the books) but have in fact returned to the same grittiness and brutality of the original films, e.g. Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Thunderball, which were largely humorless films portraying Bond as a “blunt instrument” capable of brutality when the situation called for it, and what they lack in the degree of action of the current films they make up for in a degree of political incorrectness that was shocking in its day.
The Moore-era films basically substituted Simon Templar for Bond (save for For Your Eyes Only). They may have had “wild and krazy hijinks” but they were also entirely disposable films of limited repeat value. Although they were strung on an investigative plot, the actual details were more absurd than an indestructible steel-jawed henchman, and the writing and characterization was about as sophisticated and well thought out as a plan to control a solar powered laser located in the South China Sea. The Brosnan films were not much better, although Brosnan at least managed to acquit himself in action sequences. Die Another Day was a low point in the series, essentially being an even more absurd and pointless remake of Diamonds Are Forever. Brosnan himself came off as a wisequipping dandy who no one could imagine having been handpicked from the ranks of the SBS as a professional elite operator. And the string of villains–often played by great acting talents such as Sean Bean, Michael Lonsdale, and Jonathon Pryce–allowed the actors no latitude for depth.
Regardless of whether you like the films or not, this statement is objectively wrong. The quality of the writing, and particularly dialogue has dramatically improved with the recent films. The exchange between Bond and Vesper on the train to Montenegro was an outstanding bit of dialogue, establishing Vesper as being both intellectually and emotionally on par with Bond. (“I like this poker thing. And that makes perfect sense! Since MI6 looks for maladjusted young men, who give little thought to sacrificing others in order to protect queen and country. You know… former SAS types with easy smiles and expensive watches. Rolex?”) Eva Green is by far measure the best Bond girl since Diana Rigg.
Craig himself brings a cat-like physicality to the role that has been missing since Thunderball, when Connery stopped doing most of his own stunts. The knife fight scene in Mr. Slate’s hotel room is probably the most intense and realistic edged weapon scene ever brought to film; just two guys going at it with everything at hand, just trying to win a few more seconds of life. The opening scenes of Casino Royale, crosscutting between the cool German Existentialist style in the office building and the brutal cinéma vérité style of the brutal toilet fight was both compelling and harkened back to classical stylistic filmmaking, letting the viewer know that this wasn’t just another tired effort to cash in on a played out story with tepid blue screen effects. (Watch the beginning of Goldeneye to see what I mean; even for its day, the effects are just bad.)
As for “the franchise drop[ping] dramatically in appeal,” I think the grosses and ticket sales speak for themselves. Quantum of Solace was an inferior film to be sure, both creatively and in public estimation, though it also did some very interesting things that defied the paradigm of Bond films, like filming Bond’s escape from the floating opera stage in Bregenz crosscut with scenes from Tosca, giving both intensity and thematic depth to what would have otherwise been a straightforward chase sequence. That the exploding hotel near the end of the film for no good reason was so absurd is actually an argument against the “krazy hijinks” of past Bond movies insofar is this is exactly the kind of ending seen in nearly every Moore and Brosnan era film, although still better done than the incomprehensible end of films like Goldeneye and The World Is Not Enough.
As for the plots of both films, while they are told in a somewhat nonlinear fashion that requires the viewer to pay attention, they’re hardly complex. In Casino, Bond stumbles onto a plot by terrorist financier Le Chiffre, who funds terrorist organizations at the behest of an unnamed benefactor (later reveled to be the shadowy Mr. White) but also plays fast and loose with his customer’s money despite promising “no risk in the portfolio”. When Bond foils his plan to bankrupt a major airline manufacturer by destroying their flagship superjumbo (basically standing in for the Airbus 380) and short-selling their stock, he finds himself out of his client’s funds, and in desperation sets up a high stakes poker game in Montenegro, certain that his mathematical prowess will make him the winner. (Why he doesn’t just do this in the first place is never explained, but whatever.) M sends Bond to play against him and drive him out of the game so that he’ll have to turn to MI-6 for sanctuary, giving up information on his terrorist clients. Unbeknownst to Bond and company, Vesper (representing the treasury) has been compromised and causes Bond to fall ignore the obvious (that Vesper gave Le Chiffre notices of his tell) and turn against his ally. (An obvious tell being a critical Achilles heel for an expert player is not a very realistic, but since it is also used in Rounders we can excuse the writers for using it as a shortcut. Vesper ultimately betrays Bond by turning over the money, but then gives him a shot to avenger himself and her by leaving him Mr. White’s phone number.
In Quantum, which immediately follows Casino, Bond kidnaps Mr. White with the intent of interrogating him. Unfortunately, MI-6 and other agencies are laced with moles to Quantum, the organization that Mr. White represents and that sells its services undermining governments and making profits in the bargain; essentially a spiritual successor to SPECTRE without the legal entanglements. Bond follows the lead of marked bills to a series of underlings, uncovering a plot by Quantum and led by Dominic Greene to destabilize Bolivia and control the critical water supply, which falls under the radar of governments and competitors focused on oil, gold, and diamonds. Despite being undermined by his own service and the CIA, he defeats Greene and finds the man who betrayed and turned Vesper, but in a twist for a man known for leaving nothing but “dead ends” he lets the man live to be interrogated.
