Not "classic Bond", but a lot more believable Bond

Rating: 9/10 (6 May 2008)

A lot of people had problems with this film. Most of them seem to be based upon "this is not Bond". That's true. Casino Royale is NOT Bond - at least, not Bond like he is in the other Bond films. But, in truth, Casino Royale was never written that way, even by Ian Fleming. Die Another Day seemed to try to out-Bond Bond: gadgets so complex and unbelievable they defy reason, a literally unidentifiable (until the obligatory dénouement, of course) villain, lame (even by usual Bond standards) jokes between Q and Bond, and a Bond girl in Halle Berry who just didn't really work for me.
By comparison, Casino Royale had only a couple of bad jokes (Vesper: "I'm the money." Bond: "Every penny of it."), a thrilling action scene at the beginning, and a storyline in which the villain isn't just a bog-standard "I expect you to die!" kind of villain, but a villain who has his own relationships with other members of the underworld, and has his own confrontations and his own problems to deal with. That in itself is enough to give Le Chiffre some depth that I think is really lacking in the villains of many other Bond films.
In addition, I quite enjoyed the destruction of Bond's soul through the course of the movie. Some have said that Bond would never have run away with Vesper - well, that's because he's not yet really the Bond we know when he does it. The film is the journey from human and hot-headed to cold and ruthless. The next film will be the real teller as to whether Daniel Craig can really do the latter convincingly, but I thought he did a fine job in portraying the journey. The change from a big-headed, really quite arrogant, wannabe 007 to a deflated, soulless killer was very effective; I never thought the "suave Bond" was a particularly good character anyway, as someone who's both completely smooth socially AND essentially a contract killer just doesn't jive with me; you have to be more one or the other, and I'd rather the killer came out than the suaveness. For me, the fact that Craig looked not quite at home in a suit worked in the character's favour.
Ultimately, I'm a believer in the idea that even if it's part of a series, any film should be able to stand on its own. I hated The Matrix Reloaded and I hated Attack of the Clones. Casino Royale has an obvious connection to the other Bond films simply because it's Bond, but story-wise there was no good way to link it to the previous Bond film and I think the writers were sensible not to try. Casino Royale, as a story, stands alone, and although it clearly leads on to Quantum of Solace, it stands alone well. The product placement is still a little painful, and the final hand of the poker was pretty unbelievable, but then, if four people are going to go all-in in a $150m pot, they'd all have to be *very* good cards. I thought the rest of the film was just good solid entertainment, with a creative twist that most Bond films don't have and, lately, have been sorely missing.
In short, if you watch Bond just for the formulaic girls, the gadgets and the guns, leave Casino Royale alone. If you watch Bond for other reasons, I recommend it to you highly.
(And finally, in response to the bizarrely common question "why did they use poker, baccarat is much classier": as a card player myself, despite the fact that baccarat was used in the book, let me assure you that baccarat is almost entirely a game of chance, and Texas hold'em has a much greater element of skill. From a logical point of view, the use of baccarat would have been even more unbelievable; it's virtually inconceivable that the Treasury would let go of ten million pounds for a game of chance.)