Release Date:
Friday, November 17, 2006
To borrow a famous ad line: "Bond Is Back," but this time they mean business. Casino Royale, the 21st entry in the long-running film franchise is based on 007 author Ian Fleming's first book in the series (not to be confused with the hokey 1967 movie that featured Peter Sellers and Woody Allen among others as Bond). It will shake you, stir you, and leave you wanting more. By returning to the original source material, this team has created, without question, the James Bond adventure to top them all—a Double-O-Sensational film with enough excitement and action for 12 movies. Replacing aging Pierce Brosnan in the titular role, Daniel Craig takes command from the first moment he steps on screen in an amazing black and white pre-credits sequence, reinvigorating the world's most famous spy with grit, power, danger, humanity, and high style. Tracing his early career as a secret agent (but updated to a post-9/11 world), Bond takes on a newer, more realistic kind of villain in Le Chiffre, the key money connection to a whole network of terrorists. In the film's main set piece, Bond engages him in the high stakes poker game to end all games. Of course he also gets involved romantically, this time with Vesper Lynd (stunning Eva Green), a treasury official on assignment to make sure the government's money is safe. Gone are the fantastical, increasingly ridiculous stunts of recent Bond films. Instead they've been replaced by action sequences that give new definition to the overused phrase "heart pounding." One foot chase at a construction site stands with anything in the 20 previous films for pure thrills—and a lot of the credit has to go to Craig. A gut-wrenching torture scene is just one reason he deserves to become the first Bond ever to be nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.