The Bond franchise finally breaks free from its own rules

Rating: 7/10 (26 November 2006)

"Casino Royale" marks a change in the 007-franchise. What we see here is a very different James Bond and that was to be expected since this is the official first chapter in the series (although the chronology is more than messed up with "Casino Royale" taking place after 9/11 whereas a lot of the previous Bond movies mentioned the Cold War et al).
Anyway, let's hope that this trend to break free from previous Bond rules will continue from now on. How much longer could we have taken a smirking, Martini slurping Bond that never shows any feelings at all, never makes mistakes and is basically invulnerable.
A lot has been argued about the decision to cast Daniel Craig as the new Bond. Truth be told, Craig has obviously been miscast. Period. It's not that the man acts badly - how badly would you have to act to screw up James Bond? Come on, let's be real here, this isn't Hamlet -, no, he just doesn't have the right look. Maybe that's another reason why this movie doesn't really feel like a Bond movie and maybe that's a good thing, since this franchise has become really trite since the 80's.
"Casino Royale" is a well made movie with some great action sequences. Some of the Casino scenes are a bit long maybe, because they seem old-fashioned and slow. I'm guessing these are probably leftovers that remained from the original novel, since they don't really fit the rest of the fast moving, modern storyline.
Hey, no one said this movie was immaculate! It does have its lengths but in the end the balance between action scenes and story development was maintained nicely. The only thing I really missed in "Casino Royale" was a bit more irony, the way Roger Moore always brought it across so hilariously, but maybe it's too early for that. After all Bond has just been reborn and is now a completely different beast.