It's just not Bond

Rating: 7/10 (22 November 2006)

I liked this film overall, it's entertaining, there are some great sequences throughout, the women are beautiful, and the locations are breathtaking. But it's just not Bond. I don't care what anyone says, Bond needs gadgets. It's an underpinning of the entire genre of Bond. Moreover, the banter between Bond and Q is always a highlight of the film; if M can be replaced (by the horrific Judy Dench) then why can we not have a new Q? Also, Bond doesn't fall in love. It's just not how he operates. I don't care how young and naïve he is supposed to be in Casino Royale, women to Bond are simple disposable pleasures that are purely there for mere mortals in audience to aspire to.
I can acknowledge that the last two Bond films were pretty poor and made James Bond genre a parody of himself, but the way to fix this is not to run in the opposite direction and distance the movie from everything that Bond stands for.
As a final word, if this weren't a Bond film, how many people would have even bothered to watch this spy movie? Would it really have made it in to the IMDb top 250 list? I don't think so.