Casino Royale (2006)

Starring Daniel Craig

We didn’t realize that we were getting bored with the same old Bond. It took the new Bond film, Casino Royale, and a new Bond, Daniel Craig, to convince us. The film is a gritty, violent, entertaining take on the James Bond persona. Craig offers a totally different spin on the character than Sean Connery and the other actors who have played Bond over the years. Connery was refined and suave, Moore stepped through improbable travelogues, Timothy Dalton added intensity, and Pierce Brosnan gave us dash and ease.

All these prior Bond versions differ drastically from the character created by author Ian Fleming. His Bond was focused on spy tradecraft, direct violence, and generally realistic villains.

The movie starts at the beginning of Bond’s career. He isn’t yet a double-O agent (for that he needs two confirmed kills). The opening credits quickly dispense with that requirement. Next we see Bond trailing a bomb-maker, when the incompetence of a colleague messes up his plans. The chase that follows is fully as thrilling and satisfying as the best of the other Bond films.

Craig’s Bond is calculating and at times brutal, and the movie acknowledges that a man (whose Double-O designation means he has a license to kill) is not necessarily a nice or a perfectly balanced person. I give the screenwriters and director Martin Campbell a lot a credit for taking the time to examine the kind of man who kills for a living, and the human feelings he has to submerge or deny as he grows into his job.

There’s an absence of the gee-whiz technology emphasis of the earlier Bond movies. There’s no daffy Q loading Bond up with improbable gadgets. Instead, Bond has to rely on his wits, his physical prowess in hand-to-hand combat, and his skills with a pistol.

Also, Bond isn’t the casual omnivorous womanizer earlier portrayed. He dallies with a married woman, explaining to her that it’s safer that way. His later relationship with a treasury department liaison is sedate and touching.

In a wry update of the original novel, James Bond plays the wildly popular “No-Limit Texas Hold-‘em Poker” instead of the old fashioned Baccarat game against the villainous Le Chiffre. But it doesn’t matter. There’s some entertaining high-stakes card-playing in suitably luxurious surroundings. Also, Le Chiffre is a human-scaled villain instead of a talkative megalomaniac trying to conquer the world, another refreshing departure from the other Bond flicks.

Altogether, this is not your father’s James Bond. If you want the easier-going (and less violent) Bond, with more humor, then seek out DVDs of the earlier movies. Each Bond made some great films. I’d highlight Connery’s Goldfinger, Moore’s Moonraker, Dalton’s The Living Daylights, and Brosnan’s Tomorrow Never Dies. This movie stands on its own merits, and I’m looking forward to the next Daniel Craig Bond outing.