Old Dog, New Tricks.

Rating: 9/10 (29 November 2006)

Bond is back. This reinvention of Ian Fleming's first Bond story is captivating and exhilarating as it is magnificent. With the lack of gadgets and witty innuendoes, Casino Royale is back to basics thuggery and tough guy masculinity. The action is fast paced as it is well thought out, with tremendous stunts and action sequences that hypnotise and excite.
With lavish locations, as to be expected, such as Venice, already used in From Russia With Love (1963) and Moonraker (1979), the Bahamas, Prague and nooks and crannies in-between. This is a stupendous crossover from a classic 1952 story to a modern upbringing, while respecting the old, intermingling of the two is done effortlessly and timelessly, the last Bond movie to use the Ian Fleming moniker was The Living Daylights (1987) some nineteen years hence.
Daniel Craig is well suited to this new era of Bond, his no nonsense stance is calibrated to be exactly what the Bond franchise needed. This franchise was slowly eroding into parody, it was the dog that was chasing its own tail, the only way to come into the new millennium and beyond was to reinvent, to revitalise, and with having the luck of the first Fleming story, finally, this introduction has become an impressive first taste of what is yet to come.
Admittedly, with the new age of CGI that the past Bond movies seem to need to survive, they have become lifeless and dull. Casino Royale seems to use little CGI and relies on the old fashioned school of stunts and action, a great twist in the tail that has this mad dog of an Englishman needing no substitutes for the real thing, and with great reverence, this has worked wonders for the franchise. Great stuff, great result. Bond is back.