New Bond movie ends ‘Casino’ story

McClatchy Newspapers

MIAMI — When “Casino Royale” opened in theaters around the world in November 2006, producer Barbara Broccoli — daughter of original James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli and keeper of the 007 movie flame — was a little nervous.

Not only were she and co-producer Michael G. Wilson introducing a new Bond, actor Daniel Craig, but they were also rebooting the entire 20-film series, taking the character back to the beginning of his career as a globe-trotting, not-yet-suave MI6 agent.

Fortunately, audiences liked what they saw. “Casino Royale” grossed nearly $600 million worldwide — more than any Bond film before it — and Broccoli exhaled.

“‘Casino Royale’ exceeded our expectations, really,” Broccoli recalled during a recent press day at Miami’s Mandarin Oriental hotel. “It was exciting and fantastic when it did so well. And when it was time to start work on the next one, we had to deliver something that was just as good — if not better.”

What they came up with — the action-intensive “Quantum of Solace,” which opens Friday — marks a series of firsts for the venerable franchise. “Quantum” is the first 007 movie to pick up immediately where the previous one ended — specifically, around 15 minutes later, according to Broccoli.

“At the end of ‘Casino Royale,’ we felt there was a lot of unfinished business,” Broccoli said. “Bond had fallen in love with the government agent Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green, who died at the end of the film, and had his heart broken. He was in denial and emotionally shut down. He understood that Vesper kind of gave up her life for him and he wants to go after the people responsible — the hand that holds the whip, so to speak.”

That hand turns out to belong to a top-secret organization known as Quantum — so secret even Bond’s boss, M (Judi Dench), has never heard of it. Bond’s quest for revenge sends him around the globe, to places including Austria, Bolivia and Haiti, where he meets Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who happens to be searching for some payback of her own.

When Craig’s casting was first announced, many diehard Bond fans complained that the blond, blue-eyed, ruggedly handsome actor did not match the traditional 007 mold of the sophisticated tall, dark and handsome agent.

But Craig’s surprising approach to the role in “Casino Royale” — playing Bond as a still-brutish, quick-tempered, trigger-happy diamond in the rough — earned the fans’ respect and revitalized the character, who had sailed far beyond the verge of becoming a cartoon.

Craig said he took the same approach to “Quantum of Solace,” constantly coming up with bits of business — such as the way Bond’s eyes quickly dart around his surroundings after he’s killed an enemy on a hotel balcony, to make sure nobody saw him — that keep the viewer tuned into the character’s inner thoughts.