A unique Bond film reintroducing the series

Rating: 10/10 (15 January 2007)

Sometimes I feel like I'm in the minority in that I pretty much consistently enjoyed all the Bond films made between 1962 and 2002 ( Except for A View to a Kill which I hated). I felt the recent Bonds of Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan were great films, and Die Another Day was the best Bond film in years (despite an awful performance by Halle Berry). But some people felt that things like Bond's invisible car in DAD were the last straw and they wanted something different. And when Brosnan was effectively fired as Bond, I personally felt the Bond franchise was going to die. Especially when we started to hear rumors of inappropriate actors being considered for the part -- some as young as 23-24.
Eventually it was decided to make the 21st official Bond film into not only an adaptation of a Fleming novel (the first full novel to be adapted since Moonraker back in 1979) but a reboot of the series.
I've been on pins and needles about this for close to 3 years now. Reboots and reimaginings are terribly hit and miss. Sometimes they work well. Sometimes they are disasters. And sometimes they work really well for many people and become very popular, but for others the product loses much of what made it appealing (case in point for me being the reimagined Battlestar Galactica which doesn't do much for me - I prefer the original series).
Fortunately, and in my opinion against all odds, EON Productions has delivered a "reboot"/"reimagined" Bond that works on virtually every level. Although it has been updated for the (sorry for the cliché) "Post-9/11 world", it is still recognizably a Bond film with over-the-top action set pieces, colorful villains, multiple gorgeous Bond girls, and even gadgets.
Yes, you read that right. Despite the much-ballyhooed decision to drop Q from this film, there are still gadgets a-plenty. Granted many of them are of the type you can probably buy at Circuit City (though I don't know of many people driving around with portable defibrillators in their glove compartments) -- but gadgets are gadgets. (There was no need to omit Miss Moneypenny from the film, though -- she's in the original Casino Royale novel.)
Daniel Craig gives possibly the best performance of any Bond actor. Yes, I know it's considered a sin to rank anyone higher than the exalted Sean Connery in the role. But Daniel Craig, I think, manages the trick. And this is just on his first outing. Imagine how he'll play the role once he grows into it. Although I personally would have chosen Clive Owen for the part - the man was born to play Bond, I swear -- I think Daniel Craig was an inspired and unexpected choice. Just the sort of shake-up the series needed (the last actor chosen to play Bond who was not some sort of heir presumptive was George Lazenby; granted, in his case, the effectiveness of the choice remains a matter of debate nearly 40 years later).
Eva Green, meanwhile, has set a new gold standard for Bond girls, and in fact becomes the first such character who one would wish would appear in a sequel. Sadly, this is not to be.
I have the utmost respect for the scriptwriters on this film. (Who, it must be pointed out, are the SAME people who wrote the much-maligned Die Another Day). They have managed to write a film that actually follows the basic plot of Ian Fleming's novel quite closely (of course the film updates a lot of things and does add a number of new story lines such as Bond's pursuit of the two terrorist bombers in Africa and Miami). And by closely, I mean they also took the brave step of including the two most startling and important elements from Fleming's novel.
One of these is the infamous torture sequence, which is presented almost exactly as it is depicted in the novel. Audience members gasped when this scene appeared.
The second mirrors the end of the book, although in suitable more cinematic fashion. I won't go into details and spoil it here, but it is extremely well handled.
After two previous false starts - the 1954 TV adaptation and the 1967 spoof -- filmmakers have finally given us an adaptation of Casino Royale worthy of Ian Fleming. And in doing so, they might well have produced the best Bond film of all time.