A couple of extra points for being a better Bond.

Rating: 8/10 (27 November 2006)

This was an enjoyable film with a post-Cold War sensibility that makes you consider what a "license to kill" really does to you. Does it make a better man or justify a psychopath? We never had to wonder about that in the previous installments. I thought this was closest to Dr. No, which is welcome news.
However, this never had the kick or audience involvement of some of the better Bond films. It is a better pieced together work of cinema, but the story line is muddy and I never warmed to Eva Green's Vespa Lynd, lovely as she is. Some of the torture seemed to dwell on the sadistic and slowed things down. But Daniel Craig, I thought, lived up to the hype.
As an adventure film, though, I thought this was mediocre with an emphasis on production values instead of action sequences. And I started to squirm at the third hand being dealt at the casino. The outcome was certain and the film 20 minutes too long. For instance, minute for minute, Mission: Impossible III (under-rated and ignored for the wrong reason) is tighter and has more kinetic punch (nothing in this Casino Royale approaches the sequence on the bridge in M:I3).
But hail to Daniel Craig! Give this guy a script and a good directorand his angst over a license to kill. And they can knock out even more of the stuffy self-references to the Broccoli enterprise. I'm sure half the audience had no idea what any of those meant.