Here It Is/Where It All Began

Rating: 9/10 (8 January 2017)

This Bond film is well written and exciting, It shows us the way that the 007 legend began. We find how Bond takes advantage of a situation to make himself the guy with the license to kill. He begins to battle wits with the villain, LeChifre, who is in the center of international finance. He is also a gambler who is managing to make one hundred percent on his investments, Bond has to use every manner of effort to confront the barriers placed before him, including winning at cards. I remember the asinine first Hollywood version of this book, which came in the wake of some of the best "serious" Bond films. It had comedians Peter Sellers and Woody Allen and more silliness than you could shake a stick at. One thing I noticed is that the card game played was poker. In the book and the original movie, he plays Baccarat. Of course, hardly any Americans understand this game. In the first film there is a dramatic moment when a card is turned over and Bond wins...to this day, I don't know why!