While Mel Gibson is starting to look more like a crinkle-cut chip than an action hero these days, Casino Royale director Martin Campbell is obviously having a ball jumping him through hoops, redirecting his classic BBC series with explosive aplomb. It seems lessons learnt from Bond have been packed in, so while there is believable motivation and characterisation here, the film benefits immensely from the lack of filler that stretched and slowed the TV version – occasionally with amusing side effects if you’re familiar with the original. There’s no time here for Gibbo to sit about watching TV or crying on the hard shoulder here. Not when there are mysteries to be solved and exposition TO BE SHOUTED.
While Bob Peck’s Craven had time to psychologically spar with his opponents, Mel decides a knife fight and shouting will do just as well, while any slightly oddball elements to the central father-daughter relationship have been chucked out for something more in keeping with a mainstream Hollywood movie. As such the film occasionally steps on the ridiculous but fun shoes of Taken, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t time for some decent emoting. Death carries real consequence and emotional heft here, and while the Cold War apocalyptic overtones are missing, the conspiracies revolving around national security and terrorist threats should be no less disturbing -at least to US audiences.
While it’s a good thing that there’s no scrimping on the subtext, there is a sense that there are two films on the go here -one Gibson Death Wish analogue in the mould of Ransom, or even Lethal Weapon – while a lower budget political thriller seems to have been grafted on, with shadowy characters like Ray Winstone’s Jedburgh popping in and out at odd times, seemingly -and appropriately – intent on their unknown business adjacent to the main crash-bang action. Meanwhile the US setting doesn’t quite come off. While the Boston locale has a certain European flavour, it’s hard to imagine US viewers being unsettled by British political manoeuvring in the way that the original played on American military influence in 80’s Britain.
Gibson himself is showing his age, and despite his long absence from the screen his private life still makes it impossible to forget that it’s a movie star and not a character up there, but that said he does a solid job of playing a Hollywood cop with slightly more emotional damage than the usual, and whenever things threaten to wobble off the rails he dependably fires off a few shots and shouts enough to keep things moving. Fast but not quite furious enough, and lacking the weirdo mysticism that lurked under the skin of the original, this is still an effective thriller, albeit one suffering an identity crisis.
