Brosnan couldn't have pulled this off

Rating: 9/10 (26 November 2006)

If you go to see Casino Royale expecting to see the next James Bond film, you will be disappointed. If you go to see Casino Royale to see Daniel Craig prove the critics wrong, then you'll love it. Craig looks like Bond when he first dons the tux, and his cold blue eyes mirror the grittiness of the film. The opening scene is both the worst and best of the ones we have seen over the years. The worst in that is no where near on par with the action of the heart stopping boat chase in The World is Not Enough, but the best in that it sets the tone of the film, announcing the rejection of computer generated imagery, and the idea for it to be in black and white was pure genius. Craigs acting brings a smile to our face, even managing to make us laugh during the brutal torture scene, "I've got an itch...ARRRGH....no, no, to the right! ARRRGH, YES YES!!" The discourses between Craig and Green are smart and well written, more than can be said for so many other bond girls over the past years. The theme tune is good, the Bond is certainly good, but make no mistake, this is not the same Bond you saw in 2002, in more ways than one. The CGI is not missed, but Q-Branch are. The movie lacks a decent car chase, and, something i sorely missed, Bond's sardonic humour is missing. At one point, Craig kills a man with a nail through his eye. The smarter fraction of the audience would expect Bond to remark with something along the lines of, "Hit the nail on the head" but it doesn't come. Despite these missing ingredients, Craig does indeed impress, and one cannot help smile as he orders a vodka martini, or feel a satisfaction with the words, "Bond, James Bond." Daniel Craig brings meaning to the words, Ian Fleming's 007, he is more Bond than Dalton, more Bond than Moore, Lazenby and Brosnan. I would throw cation into the winds and say that, based on his performance in this film, he is better than Connery, but thats an argument for the message boards. If the inevitable next generation of Bond Films continue along this path, it would most certainly not be a bad thing. But it would be a lie to say that i, we, will not miss the old watch with the laser beam, or a car with an ejector seat. In spite of this, Casino Royale is one of the best Bond films, and indeed, action films, you will see. The man who writes film reviews for the times knows nothing about films.