Eragon

Released: December 14
Rated: M
Director: Stefen Fangmeier
Screenwriters: Peter Buchman et al., from the novel by Christopher Paolini
Starring: Edward Speleers, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Guillory, John Malkovich, Rachel Weisz (voice), Djimon Hounsou
Running time: 103 long minutes

Plot: The land of Alagaësia is in the thrall of an evil king, Galbatorix (Malkovich). When a young farm-boy, Eragon (Speleers), discovers a dragon’s egg, he becomes a Dragon Rider — a hero who will lead a small group of rebels against the king and his right-hand man...er...Shade, Durza (Carlyle).

In the absence of other profitable fantasy franchises, some studio needed to step up this Christmas and cash in on the Da Vinci effect: a rule which states that (a) the popularity of a book bears no relation to its quality, and; (b) even an execrable book should be turned into a movie if there is a ready market of readers happy to hand over their hard-earned at the cinema. For Fox, Eragon was the perfect candidate.

Christopher Paolini began his novel when he was 15. At so tender an age, even a home-schooled youth cannot be expected to have travelled much in the realms of gold, and Paolini appears rather to have mined various veins of popular culture. Eragon’s plot and characters are highly derivative of the Star Wars franchise: Luke Skywalker, uncle Owen, Obi-Wan, Han, Vader, the Emperor, Jabba’s palace, and more are thinly disguised here. Further, geography and various names have been adapted from Tolkien, only without the don’s philological consistency.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with this in itself: Star Wars is itself derivative of Kurosawa, Leone, et al., and Tolkien borrowed from almost every European mythology. But Eragon fails to surpass or even properly to synthesize any of its source materials: it is merely cliché. Regrettably, the film seems only to exacerbate the novel’s shortcomings.

Fangmeier appears to have taken instruction from the Lucas school of direction: Speleers is woefully wooden, and even the quality, experienced actors deliver their lines like they’re on a high-school stage. They are hardly helped by risible lines like, “Is there anyone who trusts the word of a Shade?”, “I suffer without my stone,” and, “Yesterday you were a farm-boy; today you are a hero.” The unenviable task of providing exposition falls to Jeremy Irons, whose voice-over stoops to explain to us that “a boy went hunting”, even as on screen we watch a boy going hunting. Meanwhile, the telegraphed plot trundles along; characters appear and disappear without any explanation, but we’re never given any reason to care for them, anyway.

All the elements are here to have made a classy, tongue-in-cheek farce, in the vein of Starship Troopers: derivative plot, OTT costumes, painfully overblown score, silly names (I defy you not to laugh whenever somebody says ‘Galbatorix’). The book’s fans might not have noticed, and it would have been a lot more fun for the rest of us. Unfortunately, the tone remains far too earnest, so almost all the laughs are unintentional.

As for the effects, the battles are rather lame in light of recent offerings, but the dragon looks not too bad — at least when Eragon’s not riding her. If you need a dragon fix, though, you’d be better off re-watching The Return of the King, or even Reign of Fire.

Eragon certainly won’t scratch your holiday-fantasy itch. Indeed, it’s the kind of dodgy '80s-style snake-oil that saw fantasy banished from cinemas for such a long time.

Verdict: An extra star for the cute new-hatched dragon. Otherwise, there’s nothing here you haven’t seen done better before.

Casino Royal

Released: December 7
Rated: M
Director: Martin Campbell
Screenwriters: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade
Starring: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Ivana Milicevic, Caterina Murino
Running time: 144 minutes

Plot: Newly promoted 00 (and ace poker-player) James Bond (Craig) is charged with bringing down the terrorist banker, Le Chiffre (Mikkelsen). Having lost his clients’ money, Le Chiffre plans to win it back at a poker game in Montenegro. M (Dench) agrees to fund Bond’s entry into the game, but assigns the alluring Vesper Lynd (Green) to keep an eye on the money.

Any enduringly successful franchise has to reinvent itself periodically to remain relevant and attractive. In Casino Royale, Martin Campbell has given Bond the ‘Deli Choices’ makeover — again.

Campbell helmed GoldenEye, the first Bond outing with Pierce Brosnan and Judi Dench, which rescued the series from post-Cold War insignificance. To my mind, the post-9/11 (and -Abu Ghraib) climate had seemed more suited to the likes of Jason Bourne and Evey Hammond. But it turns out that it is also the perfect setting to rebirth Bond, and Campbell is an able midwife.
In Casino Royale, he takes us back to the beginning, creating a grittier, more realistic world for Bond to inhabit, even as all our hero’s familiar trademarks are revealed — Aston Martin, vodka martinis, tuxedo, silenced pistol, muted brassy theme music, witty quips, and misogyny.

There is a grainy, black-and-white pre-credits sequence with a luscious soundscape that sets the film’s visceral tone, as well as hinting at the innovative feel of the remodelled Bondiverse. The credits play over stylized gore and Mandelbrot, then we’re thrust into an awesome parkour set-piece that is at once familiar and refreshing.

This chase through a Ugandan market, construction site, and finally embassy is familiar insofar as it has its moments of over-the-top incredibility. But it is innovative in that we realize that this new Bond is not Superman — his hair can be messed up; he can have the wind knocked out of him, not to mention his teeth.

Despite all the pre-release naysaying, Craig is the perfect choice for Bond. A proper thesp, his capacity to play both intense and light has been ably demonstrated in The Power of One, Road to Perdition, and Munich. His bulkier physique and piercing eyes capture the essential qualities of Bond in a way perhaps no actor has before: he looks like he could kill you with his bare hands, and yet he remains eminently beddable.

Regrettably, Eva Green seems to miss the mark somewhat as Vesper Lynd. As in her previous English-language outing, Kingdom of Heaven, she looks stunning, but fails to render her character believable.

Craig’s performance grounds the emotional and character arcs of the film, but the narrative seems more like a sequence of vignettes than a coherent story. This creates pacing problems, as we lurch from plot-turn to spectacular set-piece, never quite sure which characters we’re supposed to focus on, or where the climax is. In the end, we need M’s exposition to make sense of it all.

These flaws are not fatal, however, because ultimately this is a film about James Bond. Yes, there are some tongue-in-cheek nods to the cheesiness of the score of films that precede it — Solange’s (Murino) horseback entry being perhaps the most ludicrous — but for the franchise to continue, Casino Royale must help us to understand and so empathize with Bond, whom in GoldenEye M rightly characterized as a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War”. Craig has both the acting chops and the physical sizzle to make it happen.

Verdict: With a physically and emotionally vulnerable star, Casino Royale gives the Bond franchise a bright future.