BOND HAS RETURNED

Rating: 8/10 (19 March 2020)

A breath of fresh life into the James Bond series.
Casino Royale restarts the franchise with a more realistic, brutal take on Bond. The film strips away the excessive gadgetry and CGI that was a trend in previous titles. Thank god. This new direction helped set the tone for Daniel Craig 007 movies to come.
The action sequences action-packed and satisfying. Though, the main villain(s) were a bit underdeveloped and the movie left us at a cliff-hanger. Some died a bit too fast, IMO.
Some things still did break my suspension of reality. Why is such a high-stakes poker game have such lax security? Vesper can walk up to Bond while he's playing. Bond can walk away from the game uninterrupted for hours. People are found murdered and kidnapped but security/police is not alerted despite the clientele at the game.
But besides that, I'm glad the film does great justice to its source material.
4/5. One star off for some laziness in writing, still a great film.