Movie Review: Casino Royale

Daniel Craig is James Bond. If you had any doubts about that, you need to see the movie. He’s cool, handsome, and credible. The movie has some great stunt and action sequences, a spectacular car scene (not an American-style chase but rather some really good FX), glamorous locations, attractive women, and sufficient verisimlitude to support a suspension of disbelief.

The producers have decided to reboot the franchise for the post-cold war era. We get to see James Bond earning his stripes as a “double-o” agent in modern times. Bond’s first kill is very gritty. Daniel Craig delivers on the emotional toll that the job of killer super-spy takes on the character. Both The Wife and I liked the rough-around-the-edges Bond of this movie. It’s also probably a good thing that Bond’s gambling of choice has moved from baccarat to Texas Hold’em. It makes for a more dramatic showdown in the classy casino and dovetails nicely into the glacial cool that the character is supposed to exude.

I’d have given the movie an “R” instead of a “PG-13” for a scene of torture (which actually was not as credible as it could have been) and the sexuality scenes are also steamy adult fare despite the lack of overt nudity. Oh yes, and then there’s the violence.

The opening scene in a Bond film, by convention, is usually only tangentially related to the rest of the plot, but that’s often where the best stunts are found, and this is no exception. Get to the movie on time to see the opening — although the half hour of previews and commercials they show before movies these days will make it hard for you to miss the opening scene anyway.

This is not to say the movie was flawless. Some of the gadget play was a bit silly, although it was not as over the top as in previous Bond flicks (The World Is Not Enough was the worst offender here). The bad guys were not as fully-developed as I would have liked, but on the other hand I suspect that we will be seeing more of them in the future as the franchise revives the long-forgotten SPECTRE as a source of interesting foils for Bond in the future. The overall plot is not hard to anticipate and the movie gets a little bit talky at times — inevitable, I suppose, given that the focus of the movie is a poker tournament. And at more than two and a half hours in length, and with lots of pre-movie material to sit through, I have to advise not buying any beverages at all before the film.

But come on. When you go to a Bond film, you want a few things. You want Bond Girls, looking hot in slinky, revealing outfits. You want stunning action sequences. You want sexy cars and martinis shaken, not stirred. You want double-crosses and narrow escapes and espionage. You want exotic, beautiful locations. Casino Royale delivers all of this. It’s worth the price of admission and three hours.