Great Rebooting Of the Franchise After the Laughable Die Another Day

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2007)

Daniel Craig stars as the 'new' James Bond, and 'new' it sure is! After chasing down a Spinder-Man like African bomb maker, Bond thwarts a large airbus being destroyed. The man behind the bombing, 'Le Chiffre', used this event to bet against the stock market for the particular avionics company. Unfortunately, though, he lost a lot of money.
Now his employers are after him. His last resort is to enter into a high-stakes poker game taking place at Casino Royale. Bond's assignment is to play against Le Chiffre and to out-bet and win the game.
I would like to put more into my summary of the plot, but I can't without giving too much away. Because this, unlike some other Bond films, offers twists of a truly surprising nature.
When Daniel Craig was announced as the new actor to play Bond, naysayers and die-hards went into an uproar. 'But he's blond!' they would shout. 'He's too short!' would be another excuse. I will admit that I was skeptical when I first heard the news over a year before release of the film. But over that year, the idea grew on me. I had seen him in a few other films, and realized that he would be a good, if not great actor to portray the hard-hitting double-o.
Needless to say, I was not disappointed with the producer's decision. Craig is THE perfect tough guy to play in the role of Bond. He is the Chuck Norris of Britain. I will go as far to say that he is the best Bond since Connery.
After the mess of a Bond film that they call 'Die Another Day', it was obvious that this franchise needed a drastic reboot. If you watch the parachute-surfing scene in DAD, you know exactly what I mean. I'd say that the producers and the director Martin Campbell sure did one hell of a job and delivered on their promise.
Naysayers and even some general critics claim that the poker scene in the film drags on for way too long, and that the film is poorly paced. I can see where some of their criticisms come from, but I thought that the poker scene offered some real tension between our hero and our villain. Not to mention the fact that if Bond loses he is financing terrorism.
People also criticize the running time--and I can see that too. Clocking in at two hours and twenty four minutes, it is the longest running Bond film of the franchise. But I don't mind long movies, especially when they have something to offer.
Overall, a better, badder, more human Bond. One of the best movies I've seen so far this year.
9/10