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Daniel Craig joins the James Bond franchise in arguably its best offering to date. Craig plays Ian Fleming’s James Bond at the beginning of his career, making his second kill and earning his status as a “00” agent before the title sequence. His mission in Casino Royale is to bring Mads Mikkelsen, playing a private banker who funds terrorists, to justice. After thwarting Mikkelsen’s plan to blow up a jumbo airliner for ill-gotten stock gains, Bond is sent by M (Judi Dench) to participate in a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro, where Mikkelsen plans to win back his losses. Bond falls in love with a feisty accountant named Vesper (Eva Green), sent by M to protect their money and supervise Bond, while battling duplicitous and deadly interlopers determined to disrupt the fateful card game.
Craig’s take on cinema’s most famous spy is confident and engaging. This is Bond at his most grounded and realistic, an orphan with a chip on his shoulder. At the beginning of the film, M worries that Bond will let his emotional attachments interfere with his work, but he insists she’s wrong. When his relationship with Vesper starts to compromise him in the film’s final hour, he contemplates leaving MI6 — but fate has other plans in store. Bond’s humanity takes a serious blow in the end. On an emotional level, the film echoes On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the only other film in the series that dives as deep into Bond’s psyche — and the only other entry that’s as superlative as this one.
Director Martin Campbell (GoldenEye) keeps a tight pace while savoring a number of character moments and cinematic grace notes in one of the most well-balanced, exciting, and dramatic entries in Bond’s 23-year history. Eva Green (The Dreamers, Kingdom of Heaven) may be the best Bond girl of them all here, matching Bond in wit and powers of perception. Their first scene together, when they size each other up aboard a train to Montenegro, is one of the film’s highlights. They also share a strange but beguiling shower scene together, one that manages to convey great romance despite the fact that neither character removes their clothing. Other highlights include Bond’s race to stop the airliner from exploding, his near-fatal poisoning during the big card game, and the climactic sinking of a building into the Venice lagoon.
Mads Mikkelsen makes a top-notch Bond villain, while Giancarlo Giannini is memorable as MI6’s liaison in Montenegro. Judi Dench’s return as M is most welcome, and Jeffrey Wright becomes the seventh actor to play Bond’s CIA friend Felix Leiter. Masterfully edited by Stuart Baird and brilliantly scored by David Arnold, Casino Royale fires on all cylinders, representing the Bond series at its very finest.
With Caterina Murino, Simon Abkarian, and a decent title song performed by Chris Cornell.