"I'm sorry, that last hand... nearly killed me."

Rating: 10/10 (18 November 2006)

Bond is back, and edgier than ever before. Casino Royale, much like last summer's Batman Begins, reboots the tired and formulaic James Bond franchise by taking everything up a notch and giving us a darker, more complex Bond, and a script that's smart and sophisticated and creates heroes from the ground up that we care about and sinister villains we love to hate. Better yet  it gives us a reason to give a damn this time, by making things personal. Bond has been played many times before and by many different faces, many will say that Sean Connery was and forever will be the one true Bond and I would have to agree with that. For the last seven years Pierce Brosnan brought 007 to the big screen and he was a great choice as well. Following in his footsteps comes Daniel Craig, a new Bond for a generation; a Bond will killer instincts and sharp wits to match his lethal skills. Living up to the reputations of Brosnan and Connery is just about one of the hardest gigs in Hollywood, but thankfully GoldenEye director Martin Campbell returns to 007 with a great cast and a number of electrifying action sequences to pull you on the edge of your seat. I think Campbell should just direct Bond movies for the rest of his career.
The film starts off with James Bond acquiring his 00 status after a double assassination in Prague, and then after a visually blazing opening credits sequences races us to Madagascar, where Bond is trying to hunt down a bomb maker which ends up in one long breathtaking marathon of an action sequence. When the operation turns into a massive catastrophe M, played with an anger and scorn by Judi Dench, questions if Bond is really the right man to be part of the 00 echelon of MI6. But before she can do anything about it he's off to the Bahamas to independently track down track down a terrorist cell run by a man named Dimitrios. In the process romances his girlfriend, Solange, and thwarts a terrorist bombing.
Bond sure knows how to get around, but when MI6 learns that Dimitrios was funded by an evil banker known as Le Chiffre, played excellently by Mads Mikkelsen, who launders money through a casino in Montenegro to finance terrorists operations around the world Bond is set by MI6 to play against his in a high-stakes poker game. He's accompanied by a beautiful accountant (and cleavage extraordinaire), Vesper Lynd, played by the stunning Eva Green. Bond's interest in her deepens as they face life and death situations together and even some brutal torture (Ouch! Now that's gotta hurt!) at the hands of Le Chiffre. In Montenegro, Bond allies himself with Mathis MI6's local field agent, Mathis. The marathon game proceeds with dirty tricks and violence, raising the stakes beyond blood money and reaching a terrifying climax.
I haven't seen all of Bond movies, but I'm certainly not a stranger to them. A lot of people are saying Casino Royale is the best of the bunch, and as of now it has the highest rating in the 007 series on the Internet Movie Database, at 8.1, with Goldfinger trailing closely behind with 7.8. I'm not sure if Royale is in fact the best Bond film, but it's certainly one of the best and without a doubt the strongest since the 60's, when Connery reined supreme, and that's saying quite a lot really. I liked Craig as Bond, and could easily see him doing more 007 movies. I especially liked his British accent which seems like it's been missing from the series for a really long time. I loved the cars, the locations, the performances, the villains, the babes (oh the babes!) and the action. Casino Royale is an excellent film, with its only flaw being that it doesn't quite know when to cash its chips in; running about twenty minutes too long, but even that didn't seem to impact my feels about it. This is a solid and exciting thriller and perhaps the best action film of the year (sorry M:I:III). Bond is most certainly back and more alive than ever before.