Grabs you by ... you know

Rating: 9/10 (3 March 2020)

"Casino Royale" is a 2006 action thriller directed by Martin Campbell starring Daniel Craig and Eva Green. It's less than a month till the final installment of The Craig Bond saga hits the cinemas and after watching that trailer and listening to that dope new song by Billie Eilish, I decided to finally give the predecessors a watch. Admittedly, I've never seen any of the Ian Fleming adaptation films, neither the classics nor the modern adaptations, it just never appealed to me so much, but then my brother encouraged me to give them a spin and review them just in time before the conclusion arrives. And boy, this one packs a punch. Within the first minutes the film began to elaborate an excellently well balanced pace that couldn't have been done better. In the first act it's action packed and the chase sequences are so well choreographed that the daredevilry simply amazed me. The thing, it's not the only greatness the film has to offer, because in the second half it shows it's also a masterful thriller in it's core. The titular casino scene is filmed with such a tension that it literally gave me sweaty hands an basically had me on the edge of my seat countless times. And it was just a game of poker, in general! I didn't expect it to be this well written, that's why I was tremendously impressed. Next to this, it's filmed in such an ingenious way and the camera work is superb and at times I even forgot that it's a fourteen years old flick already - it just looks timelessly great even compared to modern action features. Aside from this, the cast is playing convincingly in here. Although I don't have any way of comparison, I think that Daniel Craig did a decent job and is as cool as an ice cube in a Vodka martini (is it served like this? Nevermind, you know what I mean!) and also Eva Green as the femme fatale is simply gorgeous and Mads Mikkelsen as the villain is brilliant as always. They all make their respective characters come to life and so interesting and I cared for all of them throughout. Although the film almost hits the two and a half hour mark in terms of run time, I haven't felt bored once. The atmosphere is always excellently built up and even the dialogue was so brilliantly constructed. For example this one scene in the train. I literally sat there and told my brother that that's one of the best dialogues I've seen recently. So much wit, so much sass and so much tension. What makes this intriguing story even better are the countless twists that caught me off guard all the time. Just when I thought the problem was solved it was like "No - takes this!" and I was shocked at times, in a positive way. It's a nail biting tension throughout the entire run time that followed me until the end. I think the peak of this feeling was the torture scene that - without sounding to vulgar - grabbed me by the balls. I felt every single emotion and every second of pain in this twisted flick. All in all, the first Craig Bond delivered surprisingly great entertainment and manages almost perfectly to balance the film between high pulse action sequences and high pulse thriller scenes and additionally looks so great as well. It's cool and stylish throughout and a magnificent kickoff to this project. It will be pretty hard to excel this outstanding piece of espionage thriller, but I'm still stoked!