Director

Martin Campbell, Marc Foster, Sam Mendes

Have Casino only on dvd and was planning to buy the Blu-ray but reading the reviews of the 4K disc including Robert's and currently at a good price I will buy it. Sep 17, 2019 #3 of 19. Las Vegas, 1973, is the setting for this fact-based story about the Mob’s multimillion-dollar casino operation, where fortunes and lives were made and lost with a roll of the dice. Disc 1 / 4k Ultra HD Movie For The Ultimate Movie Watching Experience, This Disc Features: 4X Sharper Picture Than Hd.

Studio(s)

Eon Productions/Columbia Pictures/MGM (MGM/20th Century Fox)

Film/Program Grade: See Below
Video Grade: See Below
Audio Grade: See Below
Extras Grade: B-
Overall Grade: B

Casino Royale Blu Ray Review

Review

The wait for 007 to arrive on physical 4K has been long and somewhat frustrating, especially given the fact that many of the classic films have been available digitally in 4K for a while now on iTunes/AppleTV and Amazon (though without HDR). But it only makes sense that when MGM did finally try this franchise out on UHD discs, it would be in its newest incarnation.

007: The Daniel Craig Collection includes four films—Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, and SPECTRE—in both Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD in one set. Let’s take a look at each film in turn.

Casino Royale (2006)

Daniel Craig’s first outing as 007 is not only his best, it’s one of the best films in the Bond franchise to date. Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson returned to the series’ roots by adapting the very first Ian Fleming Bond novel for the big screen.

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As it opens, MI6 agent James Bond (Craig) has just been granted 00 status by M (Judi Dench). His first act is to break into an African embassy to kill a wanted bomb-maker. But reckless as this is, Bond’s tracking a larger terrorist network that reveals itself when its banker Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) loses a huge sum of money betting against an airline stock—an airline he meant to bankrupt with another bombing. When his plot is foiled by Bond, Le Chiffre needs to recoup that money fast before the dangerous people it belonged to realize what’s happened. So he arranges a high stakes poker game at Casino Royale in Montenegro, a game he means to win. M stakes Bond in the game—if he can win it, Le Chiffre will have no one but MI6 to turn to, cutting a major source of terrorist revenue and revealing their whole network in one stroke. But matters are complicated when Bond falls for Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), the British Treasury agent assigned to watch Her Majesty’s money, and Le Chiffre’s gameplay begins to turn deadly.

What’s interesting about Casino Royale is the way it reinvents the Bond franchise by defetishizing its cars, gadgets, and villains without removing them from the formula completely. It also strips the Bond character to his essence; he’s a hard bastard to begin with, but this story breaks him. And it’s not Le Chiffre who does it, but Vesper, by revealing to Bond a heart he didn’t think he had left, thus leaving him open and exposed. What people tend to miss is that he’s still broken when this film concludes; the 007 character as we know it isn’t fully formed until the end of the next one. Green and co-star Giancarlo Giannini (as MI6’s contact in Montenegro, René Mathis) are outstanding and dimensional supporting characters, and each has terrific chemistry with Craig. Vesper’s introduction to 007 on the train to Casino Royale is one of the smartest and sharpest pieces of writing in the history of the Bond franchise. The film’s direction is efficient and its action is fast and brutal. And retaining Dench as M (a role she began with GoldenEye (1995) in the Brosnan era) was a masterstroke and a nice bit of stabilizing continuity for the franchise’s latest turn.

Casino Royale was shot on 35 mm photochemical film and finished as a 2K Digital Intermediate at the 2.39:1 scope ratio. For its UHD release it was upsampled to 4K and graded for high dynamic range (both HDR10 and Dolby Vision are included). Note that this version of the film is the Extended Cut, released on disc in the US for the first time, but it’s only 17 seconds longer (it includes a few more graphic moments during the B&W opening fight scene and the later stairwell fight at Casino Royale that were trimmed for ratings). Detail shows a noticeable uptick from the previous HD presentation, though the image has a slightly coarse and processed look that one presumes was baked into the DI. It doesn’t appear that the studio has rescanned the original camera negative in native 4K, which is a shame. But the image does look very good nonetheless. Grain is moderate, the restrained HDR grade makes shadows deeper and highlights a bit bolder, and the wider gamut enriches the film’s palette to a satisfying degree. Audio is the same English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix that was found on the previous Blu-ray. As before it’s excellent, with a big soundstage, atmospheric surround play, excellent clarity, and firm bass. But it’s a shame that MGM didn’t spring for a new Atmos track. Additional audio options include Spanish, Czech, Hungarian and Polish 5.1 Dolby Digital and French, Castilian, German, and Italian 5.1 DTS, with subtitles available in English, Spanish, French, Castilian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Czech, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, and Portuguese.

The only extra on the 4K disc itself is:

Audio Commentary with the Crew hosted by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson

Note that there are optional subtitles available for this commentary in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The package does also include the film on Blu-ray (the same disc that’s in the Bond 50 box set), which includes the same commentary and adds the following (in the original SD and HD): Seneca niagara poker tournament schedule.

Deleted Scenes (4 scenes – 7:32 in all)
The Road to Casino Royale (26:35)
Ian Fleming’s Incredible Creation (21:16)
James Bond in the Bahamas (24:17)
Ian Fleming: Secret Road to Paradise (24:29)
Death in Venice (23:20)
Becoming Bond (26:18)
James Bond for Real (23:34)
Chris Cornell’s You Know My Name Music Video (4:09)

It’s decent material, but missing are several features that were included on the previous Sony Blu-ray versions, including the BonusView PiP visual commentary with director Martin Campbell and producer Michael G. Wilson, the Know Your Double-O trivia quiz, the Bond Girls Are Forever and The Art of the Freerun featurettes, 6 Filmmaker Profiles featurettes, a storyboard presentation for the “Freerun” sequence, and the Catching a Plane scene deconstruction. Losing all of that is disappointing, so be sure to keep your previous discs if you wish to retain it. You do at least get Digital codes in the packaging (and there are two of them, which may include both HD and 4K).

Film Rating: A
Disc Ratings (Video/Audio/Extras): B+/A/B-

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Quantum of Solace is a film that many Bond fans deride, which is a shame because it’s actually better that most give it credit for. The problem is that fans were expecting a traditional Bond sequel, and this isn’t that at all, nor does it stand alone. It’s a direct continuation of the story of Casino Royale—in many ways, the second half that story. If Casino was about breaking Bond, this one is about Bond putting himself back together ag

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