Casino Royale James Bond #

The table was filling up and the cards were spread face down being stirred and mixed slowly in what is known as the ‘croupiers’ shuffle’, supposedly the shuffle which is most effective and least susceptible to cheating. Bond was relieved to be on his own again and to be able to clear his mind of everything but the task on hand. He stood at the caisse and took his twenty-four million francs against the receipt which had been given him that afternoon. He divided the notes into equal packets and put half the sum into his right-hand coat pocket and the other half into the left. Then he strolled slowly across the room between the thronged tables until he came to the top of the room where the broad baccarat table waited behind the brass rail. ‘Now,’ Bond continued, ‘when the banker deals me my two cards, if they add up to eight or nine, they’re a ‘natural’ and I turn them up and I win, unless he has an equal or a better natural. If I haven’t got a natural, I can stand on a seven or a six, perhaps ask for a card or perhaps not, on a five, and certainly ask for a card if my count is lower than five. According to the odds, the chances of bettering or worsening your hand if you hold a five are exactly even. ‘Generally, this table is divided into two tableaux. The banker plays two games, one against each of the tableaux to left and right of him. In the game that banker should be able to win by playing off one tableaux against the other and by first-class accountancy. But there aren’t enough baccarat players yet at Royale and Le Chiffre is just going to pit his luck against the other players at the single tableau. It’s unusual because the odds in favour of the banker aren’t so good, but they’re a shade in his favour and, of course, he has control of the size of the stakes. As they walked across to the Splendide, they saw that a team of workmen was already busy at the scene of the explosion. Several trees were uprooted and hoses from three municipal tank cars were washing down the boulevard and pavements. The bomb-crater had disappeared and only a few passers-by had paused to gape. Bond assumed that similar face-lifting had already been carried out at the Hermitage and to the shops and frontages which had lost their windows. The Casino was repainted in its original white and gilt and the rooms decorated in the palest grey with wine-red carpets and curtains. Vast Chandeliers were suspended from the ceilings. The gardens were spruced and the fountains played again and the two main hotels, the Splendide and the Hermitage, were prinked and furbished and restaffed. The Chief of Staff crossed his office and went through the double doors leading into M’s room. In a moment he came out and over the entrance a small blue light burned the warning that M was not to be disturbed. For over a decade, Secret Cinema has thrilled audiences with its ground-breaking event format that combines film, music, art, and theatre through the prism of iconic and beloved films. This production will be the largest and most ambitious indoor event that Secret Cinema has ever produced, with an audience of 1,500 taking part in the show each night. The battle begins with a fifty-million-franc game of baccarat, gains momentum during Bond’s fiery love affair with a sensuous lady spy, and reaches a chilling climax with fiendish torture at the hands of a master sadist. Le Chiffre, a banker to the world’s terrorists, is scheduled to participate in a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro, where he intends to use his winnings to establish his financial grip on the terrorist market. M sends Bond—on his maiden mission as a 00 Agent—to attend this game and prevent Le Chiffre from winning. With the help of Vesper Lynd and Felix Leiter, Bond enters the most important poker game in his already dangerous career. It was truly special to see one of the best Bond movies accompanied by an amazing orchestra. They were spot-on and tight especially during the difficult actions sequences. In a world without splashy high-tech gadgets, the baddies aren’t out to destroy the world with laser beams. This time, Bond’s nemesis is a shifty, lazy-eyed banker—his damaged tear ducts actually weep blood—named Le Chiffre . He runs questionable accounts for terrorist organizations (in this case, Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army) and then uses the cash to manipulate the stock market. After betting $100 million that an airline will fail, his henchman tries to drive a bomb into its new Airbus A380-esque supercarrier. When Bond kiboshes the plan, the banker loses everything. Fearing crazed LRA machetes are coming for his throat, Le Chiffre enters a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro.

There were only one or two officials and two or three men and women in evening clothes getting their things at the vestiaire. The stuffiness of the room hit him as it had hit him in the Casino in the early hours of the previous day. He called for the bill and took a last mouthful of champagne. It tasted bitter, as the first glass too many always does. He would have liked to have seen Mathis’s cheerful face and heard his news, perhaps even a word of congratulation. He drank champagne and talked a little about the happenings of the day and about the personalities of Mathis and Leiter and about the possible consequences for Le Chiffre. He was discreet and he only talked about the aspects of the case on which she must have been briefed by London. Bond noticed these small things because he felt intensely aware of her and because he wanted to draw her into his own feeling of warmth and relaxed sensuality. He thought it came from a desire to protect herself from him, or else it was her reaction to his coolness to her earlier in the evening, his deliberate coolness, which he knew had been taken as a rebuff. The entrance to the Roi Galant was a seven-foot golden picture-frame which had once, perhaps, enclosed the vast portrait of a noble European. It was in a discreet corner of the ‘kitchen’–the public roulette and boule room, where several tables were still busy. As Bond took Vesper’s arm and led her over the gilded step, he fought back a hankering to borrow some money from the caisse and plaster maximums over the nearest table. But he knew that this would be a brash and cheap gesturepour épater la bourgeoisie. Whether he won or lost, it would be a kick in the teeth to the luck which had been given him. On a small table beside him half a bottle of Clicquot and a glass had materialized. Without asking who the benefactor was, Bond filled the glass to the brim and drank it down in two long draughts. As the huge stack of plaques was shunted across the table to Bond the banker reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and threw a wad of notes on to the table. Holding a three and giving nine is one of the moot situations at the game. The odds are so nearly divided between to draw or not to draw. Since his nine could only be equalled by the banker drawing a six, he would normally have shown his count if it had been a friendly game. They looked roguishly back at him from the shadows. Le Chiffre hit the shoe with a flat-handed slap that made it rattle. As an afterthought he took out his benzedrine inhaler and sucked the vapour up his nose. Bond grimly reflected that a short examination would reveal to Leiter why he had made such an embarrassing public display of himself.

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While he, Bond, had been playing Red Indians through the years (yes, Le Chiffre’s description was perfectly accurate), the real enemy had been working quietly, coldly, without heroics, right there at his elbow. He pulled on a shirt and trousers and with a set cold face he walked down and shut himself in the telephone booth. Mechanically he brushed his fingers together. Suddenly he banged his temples with his fists and stood up. For a moment he looked out towards the quiet sea, then he cursed aloud, one harsh obscenity. I knew it would be the end of our love if I told you. I realized that I could either wait to be killed by SMERSH, would perhaps get you killed too, or I could kill myself. I love you with all my heart and while you read these words I hope you still love me because, now, with these words, this is the last moment that your love will last. So good-bye, my sweet love, while we still love each other. ‘Leave me for a little,’ she said and a new note had come into her voice.

He might not know that Bond had been cleaned out, but he must imagine that Bond had by now only small reserves. He could not know of the contents of the envelope, if he did, he would probably withdraw the bank and start all over again on the wearisome journey up from the five hundred thousand franc opening bet. Perhaps, thought Bond, Le Chiffre needed just one more coup, even a minor one of a few million francs, to achieve his object. Then he would have made his fifty million francs and would leave the table. By tomorrow his deficits would be covered and his position secure. The croupier had completed his task of computing the cagnotte, changing Bond’s notes into plaques and making a pile of the giant stake in the middle of the table. Leiter had vanished, not wishing to look Bond in the eye after the knock-out, he supposed. Yet Vesper looked curiously unmoved, she gave him a smile of encouragement. But then, Bond reflected, she knew nothing of the game. Had no notion, probably, of the bitterness of his defeat. ‘A card.’ He still kept all emotion out of his voice. He heard a faint rattle on the rail behind him and turned his head. The battery of bad teeth under the black moustache gaped vacantly back at him. His mouth felt suddenly as dry as flock wall-paper. He looked up and saw Vesper and Felix Leiter standing where the gunman with the stick had stood. He did not know how long they had been standing there.

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There was a buzz of speculation round the table. Bond’s neighbours on both sides of him bent forward and spoke solicitously about the heat and the lateness of the hour and the smoke and the lack of air. Immediately he felt something hard press into the base of his spine, right into the cleft between his two buttocks on the padded chair. For most of them it was more than they had earned all their lives. It was their savings and the savings of their families. The then only hope, thought Bond, was to stamp on him now. Not to share the bank with the table, or to take some minor part of it, but to go the whole hog. He would hate to see more than ten or fifteen million of the stake covered, and he could not possibly expect anyone to banco the entire thirty-two millions.

He looked Bond carefully, almost caressingly, in the eyes. Then his wrists sprang suddenly upwards on his knee. He settled himself comfortably on the throne-like chair and poured some of the coffee into one of the glasses. With one foot he hooked forward the small arm-chair, whose seat was now an empty circular frame of wood, until it was directly opposite him. Half-closed Venetian blinds obscured the view from the window, but cast bars of early sunlight over the few pieces of furniture and over part of the brightly papered wall and the brown stained floorboards. Le Chiffre had moved a few feet out into the passage. With a wild backward kick which connected with the thin man’s shins and brought a whistle of pain from him he hurled himself down the passage after her. With only his feet as weapons, there was no plan in his mind except to do as much damage as possible to the two gunmen and be able to exchange a few hurried words with the girl. Le Chiffre opened the door with a key and disappeared inside. Vesper, looking incredibly indecent in the early light of day, was pushed in after him with a torrent of lewd French from the man whom Bond knew to himself as ‘the Corsican’. Bond followed without giving the thin man a chance to urge him. He felt thoroughly dispirited and weak in resolve as well as in his body. He had had to take too much in the past twenty-four hours and now this last stroke by the enemy seemed almost too final. No one knew where he was and no one would miss him until well on into the morning. The wreck of his car would be found before very long, but it would take hours to trace the ownership to him. It was the sharp bite of the wire flex into his wrists that brought Bond to himself. But he felt in no mood for desperate attempts to escape and allowed himself to be dragged into the back seat of the car without resisting. A hundred yards from the cross-roads he slowed to thirty. In the mirror Bond’s great headlights were lighting up the bend. Apart from her legs, which were naked to the hips, Vesper was only a parcel. Her long black velvet skirt had been lifted over her arms and head and tied above her head with a piece of rope. Where her face was, a small gap had been torn in the velvet so that she could breathe. She was not bound in any other way and she lay quiet, her body moving sluggishly with the swaying of the car. He lay back relaxed, gazing at the ceiling, apparently uninterested in the wild speed of the car. His right hand lay caressingly on Vesper’s left thigh which stretched out naked beside him. Bond’s mind raged furiously on with the problem as he flung the great car down the coast road, automatically taking the curves and watching out for carts or cyclists on their way into Royale.

Chapter 25’BLACK-PATCH’

Bond knew it directly he looked up from his lunch and saw her face. He had told her all that the patron had told him, withholding only the man’s statement that he might be back. After a breakfast which was an effort for both of them, Vesper said she had a headache and would stay in her room out of the sun. Bond took a book and walked for miles down the beach. By the time he returned he had argued to himself that they would be able to sort the problem out over lunch. That was the end of the integrity of their love. The succeeding days were a shambles of falseness and hypocrisy, mingled with her tears and moments of animal passion to which she abandoned herself with a greed made indecent by the hollowness of their days. Bond thought with dismay that she must be going into a vin triste. ‘Don’t look so worried.’ She leaned forward and put her hand over his. Anyway, my island feels very close to your island tonight.’ She took a sip of champagne. He dried himself and dressed in a white shirt and dark blue slacks. He hoped that she would be dressed as simply and he was pleased when, without knocking, she appeared in the doorway wearing a blue linen shirt which had faded to the colour of her eyes and a dark red skirt in pleated cotton. He took off his bathing-trunks and looked down at his body. There were only a few traces left of his injuries. He shrugged his shoulders and lay down with his limbs spread out in a star and gazed up at the empty blue sky and thought of Vesper. He took a step towards her and then realized that there was nothing to say between them then. Vesper’s was a double room and Bond was next door, at the corner of the house, with one window looking out to sea and another with a view of the distant arm of the bay.

• Holding a three and giving nine is one of the moot situations at the game.
• It also further diminishes the film’s thrills with a somewhat ordinary final action sequence involving flashlights, unexpectedly deep, ice-covered ponds, and tears.
• The walls were covered in dark red satin and the chairs and banquettes in matching red plush.
• In the day he works as a journalist in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
• He reflected that he would have a bath when he got in and he absent-mindedly picked up his trunks and started walking back along the beach.

Some of the more memorable ones include Bill Tanner, Rene Mathis, Felix Leiter, Jack Wade, Jaws and recently Charles Robinson. A story line in The Beverly Hillbillies has Jethro ( Max Baer, Jr.) forsaking his lifelong ambition to become a brain surgeon in favour of “double-naught spy”. He outfits the Clampetts’ truck with various Q-inspired gadgetry, none of which work according to plan. Before his first appearance in the EON Bond film Live and Let Die in 1973, Roger Moore played the role in an episode of a TV comedy show called Mainly Millicent in summer 1964. This episode is included as a special feature in the newly published Live and Let Die Ultimate Edition DVD. After this introduction, every film (with the exception of Dr. No) would start with a pre-credits teaser, also popularly known as the “opening gambit”. Usually the scene features 007 finishing up a previous mission before taking on the case from the film, and does not always relate to his main objective. Since The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977, they have often involved attention-grabbing action sequences, which have tended to become larger and more elaborate with each film. The World Is Not Enough holds the record for the longest, running more than 15 minutes, whereas most run about seven to ten minutes. Every Bond film has been a box office success to a lesser or greater extent. They continue to earn substantial profits after their theatrical run via videotape, DVD, and television broadcasts; in the UK, Bond holds three of the top five spots of the most-watched television movies. The movie was definitely not my favourite Bond, but Craig does give an interesting new slant to the definition of Bond. At times the scenes might by described as incoherent and bit boring. I have to admit, even though I am not attracted to blond men and had mediocre expectations, I was pleasantly surprised. Which hero isn`t awkward, overly eager and unpretencious at THE BEGINNING of his career? HOT bod, by the way 😉 Pierce et al. take note. Many of the more famous and extreme weapons from James Bond films aren’t real, but that doesn’t make them any less cool. It’s a single shot custom pistol that’s assembled from a golden lighter, pen, cigarette case, and cufflink. There’s also a bullet hidden in a belt buckle. The bullet is a 4.2 mm 23 carat gold dum-dum bullet. Characteristic of Roger Moore, he was gentleman spy with a much lighter touch than Connery. In this scene, Bond is offered the shotgun to shoot pheasant. He instead takes down a sniper in decidedly cool Bond fashion.