Review of Casino Royale (2006) by Christopher R — 24 Feb 2013

Casino Royale is the best Bond movie in years. Daniel Craig is superb as a more edgy, dark James Bond. The kind you would expect right out of agent training and newly elevated to 00 status. Bond has not had the time to develop his swagger, his arrogance, or perfect his womanizing, all the things that characterize the traditional James Bond. Casino Royale enlightens the audience to the personal history of Bond before he was 007 and supplements a little depth of character. We see Bond fall in love, genuine first love; the kind that you never recover from when we've lost it and it's gone forever. In this film the audience is privy to a few of the defining events that ultimately change James Bond into 007.

Compared to the previous Bond films, especially the later Pierce Brosnan films, Casino Royale is plot driven, rather than gimmick and action driven, with impressive character development and notable enhancement in both the love interest and villain. Casino Royale lacks an over-the-top super villain such as Auric Goldfinger, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, or Dr. No, but this is actually an advantage. Le Chiffre comes off as a more pensive, intelligent, and worthy adversary. In the same way, Eva Green, as Vesper Lynd, is a welcome change from the love interests from the Pierce Brosnan era. Vesper Lynd is more than just a pretty face, she has more charm and class than any of the femme fatales in the last two decades. Her tongue-in-cheek exchanges with Bond are both humorous and amusing to watch, while the two have enough chemistry to render their romance as sincere. Besides, Eva Green is that real kind of sexy. The perfect mix of reminding you of the girl that you crushed on in college and yet is also movie star gorgeous. Her eyes are all kinds of sexy.

Casino Royale is one of the best Bond films ever and Daniel Craig is my favorite Bond behind Sean Connery. You just can't beat the original. I say this hesitantly because I felt the same way when Goldeneye came out in 1995. Goldeneye was the best Pierce Brosnan Bond film and everyone hailed it as "the role he was born to play." His later films did not live up to the hype of the original and were mostly motivated by invisible cars, funky watches, or other nifty gadgets. This being said, I missed Q and his gadgets in this film. They were part of what made James Bond, Bond. I felt that the absence of John Cleese as Q was one of the few detrimental aspects of this film. It could easily have been added to the scene where they inject the locator beacon. I know others have said, "a secret agent should be a head-butting thug like Craig, not one with cutesy one-liners, gimmicky gadgets and boyish smirks," and that "rather than resorting to gimmicky gadgets, the new 007 outwits the bad guys using skills and smarts." Still, I think a lot of die-hard fans may miss Q and Miss Moneypenny and, my favorite, the boys-and-their-toys gadgets.

All in all, I sincerely enjoyed this film and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the 007: James Bond franchise. It may become your new favorite James Bond film.

Fresh.