The Royale Treatment

I had intended to read CASINO ROYALE, Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel, before watching the movie version that came out last month. I didn't succeed, but I did pick up and read the book after seeing the movie.

A good chunk of the book made it into the movie, which is unusual in light of the later Fleming adaptations (like THE SPY WHO LOVED ME) which only retained the title, and sometimes characters, from the source material. The major additions were the Bond-as-neophyte subplot, the update from the cold war to the war against terror, and the action sequences. In the novel, Bond doesn't beat anyone up. He survives an assassination attempt only because the attempt self-destructs (literally) through incompetence; he gets out of another tight spot basically by falling on his opponent; and the one time he tries to fight someone, he fairly quickly gets his Union Jack kicked.

Another update was the change of the card game from Baccarat to Texas Hold-em Poker. The change is predictable, in part because of Hold-em's insane popularity these days, and in part because explaining Baccarat might take the audience out of the picture (although the novel provides a fairly compact, comprehensible explanation of the game's simple rules). But Baccarat, as Amy commented to me, is the perfect game for spies, because faces are meaningless.

The scene that is most directly taken from the novel is the torture scene, which had movie critics whining that it was too upsetting for a PG-13 movie. (Like a torture scene isn't supposed to be upsetting.) Bond's witty-under-pressure repartee is unique to the movie, however; in the book, Bond doesn't say much during torture except the occasional screams of pain.