Casino Royale (2006)

Rating: 8/10 (16 April 2016)

I'm not a huge James Bond fan, but I like a good spy thriller, and Daniel Craig's Bond movies have been some of the best in the past few years. I went back to his first Bond outing, Casino Royale, which is arguably Craig's best. In Casino Royale, James Bond has been armed with a license to kill and goes out on his first mission as 007 where he must defeat a weapons dealer in a high stakes game of poker. This movie serves as a reboot of the Bond franchise and shows a new story arc for Craig's Bond, so we see a more vulnerable and less experienced James Bond. There are still some ridiculously fantastic action sequences to behold, but it's obvious that he's not nearly as sharp as he will come to be. The action scenes aren't even the best part of the movie though. The second act takes place almost entirely around a poker table, changing from a spy movie to a more contained thriller. It's suspenseful and incredibly well acted. Casino Royale gives one of the more memorable Bond movies that I've ever seen and set up Craig for a great run in the role.