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  1. Casino Royale: 'Real' Returns To The Bond Series

    By Devin Zydel on 2006-11-03

    ***Warning***: Possible plot spoilers.

    As posted on the CBn forums, an article from Live Night and Day has recently been released. Covering the Miami sequence and other action scenes, it seems that Casino Royale is bringing ‘real’ back to the James Bond series…

    ‘Daniel [Craig] is extremely fit and strong–and he’s 100 per cent up for it. In the construction site scene [above] we had him 90ft up on eight-inch girders. He had no problem with that,’ says Gary Powell, stunt co-ordinator on Casino Royale.

    ‘Audiences are getting bored with computer graphics,’ says Powell. ‘There’s so much computer work in action films, you may as well be watching Shrek. We use [special effects] to top up, but really as little as possible.’

    Powell explains that they had plenty of spares on hand when it came to the action scenes with the cars: ‘In one sequence Bond’s Aston Martin gets rolled after a chase with a Jaguar. We had four Astons and four Jaguars on hand. If something went wrong, we didn’t waste time repairing it. We just kept the cameras rolling.’

    When it came to the Miami sequence between Bond and Carlos, there were three tankers on hand for the scene. ‘One for basic driving, another fitted with a huge counterweight on one side to enable it to drive on two wheels, and a third that has a driving position hidden so it looks like the principal actor is driving when in fact it is a stuntman.’

    Close calls have been associated with the Bond series before, and Casino Royale was no different. ‘Around 3.30am [for the Miami sequence], the inevitable finally happened: the vehicles get too close and Bang! There was an almighty crash. A front wheel on the tanker blew and its axle buckled. The ambulance and fire teams, who are on constant call, leapt into action. But the stuntman driver got out of the cab grinning.’

    Sebastien Foucan, who plays Mollaka in a standout freerunning scene in the film sums it up perfectly: ‘There were security systems in place but all the action is real. There was no point pretending the chase across the girders wasn’t going to be dangerous–it was.’

    Click here to read the entire Live Night and Day article on Casino Royale.

    Stay tuned to CBn for all the latest Casino Royale and James Bond news.

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