The name is blond. James Blond.

Rating: Null/10 (21 December 2006)

Aggressive, bulky and almost ugly, Daniel Craig doesn't correspond to what people expect of 007. And that is great. Yes, he is blond and has ears like fan, but can take care of the job.
Since Tim Burton elected Michael Keaton to be his Batman it wasn't seem so much bile spilling due to a choice of an actor for a specific role. Announced by the producer Barbara Broccoli, in October of 2005, as the sixth James Bond, the English Daniel Craig went through the five months of filming under a hail of criticism and ridicule, orchestrated by the extremely ferocious British tabloids and by the fan blogs on the internet. Craig is blond, while Bond is dark-haired; with 1,80m, it is too short for the role (his predecessors stayed between 1,85m and 1,89m); has fan ears, his face is squared and flattened, and he is not beautiful enough; his dramatic credits are disproportionate to the character, like Timothy Dalton, the most annoying of the Bonds. And mainly, it was said, Craig lacks the smoothness - the primordial attribute of the spy, as defined by the books of 0writer Ian Flemming and the 20 previous movies of the series. All truth. And you can't say that everything is absolutely irrelevant because, as the film itself demonstrates, these supposedly defects of Craig are, in great measure, the triumphs of this new incarnation of the secret agent.
Written in 1953, Cassino Royale is the book which Ian Fleming introduced 007. Until today, it was filmed only once, as a parody, with Peter Sellers in the role of the spy. When Barbara Broccoli (that inherited the series of her father, the legendary Albert "Cubby" Broccoli) conquered the rights of the tittle in 2001, after a long judicial fight, decided that it was the ideal opportunity to reformulate the character. Pierce Brosnan was filming his fourth and last adventure in the role of the agent and, even so, 007 A New Day To Die was about to become the biggest commercial success of the series, it was already giving unequivocal signs of exhaustion. A market research done a bit earlier revealed that, between the franchises of action and adventure, the one of 007 was the one that least attracted the younger audience, and the popularity of the games based on it wasn't going to revert the statistics on its own. Besides all, there was a need to shake up the creative fatigue that came attacking the character. Where, after two years of searches and tests with two hundreds actors in three continents, it got to the aggressive and bulky Daniel Craig, that starts the movie earning his license to kill and, subsequently, being surprised to the pleasure that it provides. James Bond, here, doesn't lack the intimacy with the subtleties of international espionage. He just doesn't know it yet.
His hunt for the villain Le Chiffre ("The Enigma"), banker of terrorists and freedom fighters all over the world, will work as an intensive course on the subject - as well as his extracurricular activities with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green, of Kingdom of Heaven), in charge by the British Intelligence to sign, or not, the checks that 007 leaves where he passes by. "I am the money" presents Vesper to the spy. "Worth every penny", replies Bond with a greedy eye, in one of those double entenders that are his signature. It won't be this, however, the tone of Cassino Royale, that also dismisses his special devices, reduces the contingent of voluptuous women and runs with pleasure over items that used to be considered necessary. This new Bond doesn't give a crap over the trifling details of a dry martini and is not rare that he prefers to use his fists over the Walther pistol (not any other 007, by the way, spilled as much blood as Craig). Also the villain he fights has no plans of world domination - his business, more convincing, is the profit - and even Vesper can't be appropriately considered a Bondgirl, since Eva Green have too much class and not enough curves to fit the pattern. From the explosive scenes of action to the sequences of seduction, what Bond reveals here is a predatory nature that Sean Connery, the canonic 007, could only suggest at his time. For the first time the franchise approaches a latent question of the character: what kind of man is this that, with or without license to kill, lives to murder? The answer to this questions goes for the next episodes - and it is hard to think of a better hook than this for a Cassino Royale sequel.