Finally a good "Real" Bond!

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2009)

Casino Royale is a Bond film that finally manages to pull of the "real" style correctly. There have been admirable efforts such as On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and the Timothy Dalton films, but none have quite pulled it off right. This is the 21st film in the "never-ending" franchise and also introduces us to our sixth actor to play Bond and the first to be based directly on Ian Fleming's initial novel, Casino Royale (excluding the 60s comedy film).
Martin Campbell, who also directed one of my favorite 007 adventures in 1995, GoldenEye, returns to the director's chair to introduce us to yet another Bond-actor. This is the most real James Bond to date and is very believable portrayal filled with some of the best camera work you'll ever witness. It comes across as real, but it also keep to classic Bond roots by including cars, beautiful women, and even some more realistic gadgets, such as a tracking device inserted within his vein and a few others kept handy within the glove box of his Aston Martin. He may not wield a laser wristwatch, but he gets the job done.
The action sequences in this film are perhaps the most intense to be put into any Bond film and shall keep you on the edge of your seat, because this may be the one film where you actually feel like James Bond is in danger. All previous films you knew that "Hey, this is James Bond. He'll make it." This one you can still think that while watching, but you certainly worry more for the title character than you have in the previous entries.
Daniel Craig does well as the title character, and is very believable as a young James Bond starting his career. He walks as if he has a chip on his shoulder and you can tell this is the angriest Bond to date. He has yet to transform into the coolheaded Bond seen in Connery, Moore, and Brosnan, and he shows it in every way. This Bond hasn't even grown accustomed to wearing a suit! But he is however a good gambler and enjoys himself some cocktails.
Judi Dench returns as M, the head of MI6. Dench who first took the role (being the first woman in the role) in the Brosnan film GoldenEye has always played a good character, but this time around she comes across as being a different type of M. This time she seems more like a worried-parent character, who treats Bond as though he is a child, because she knows he is not the Bond of legend at this point, and he needs guidance or he shall never turn into the coolheaded super agent that we all know and love.
This is one of the best entries in the James Bond franchise, there is no denying that, but I do worry of how the Craig run will end. After Campbell left Brosnan he got pulled down by scripts that relied too heavily one gadgets and comic one-liners, and now I fear that Craig may end up being weighed down from becoming overly serious (see: Quantum of Solace). We must remember that Bond is a basically a comic-book type hero who is basically a superhero who wears a suit instead of a costume.
Regardless of whether or not Craig's run ends on a good or bad note Casino Royale shall easily remain one of the best James Bond films ever made. Campbell should stop running off and stick to Bond, because it seems things start to go badly when he leaves his Bond actor in the hands of the sponsors.