This Bond is a killer, a man who obeys orders and does it in wonderfully brutal, jiu jitsu fight scenes, without stupid one-liners, ridiculous gadgets or arched eyebrows anywhere in sight.

For some reason, she employs a strangely South African accent to do this, but she’s not half bad and in one of the best developed female characterisations of the series.īook Bond infiltrates all parts of the film, not just the mid-section, however. And there are Bond girls aplenty, with Caterina Murino setting the scene as one of Bond’s married conquests and French actress Eva Green taking over as Bond’s bankroller Vesper Lynd. If you don’t, you’ll know exactly which one I’m talking about as soon as you see it onscreen.įramed around this are the traditions of movie Bond: set-pieces in exotic overseas locations, things blowing up, lots of stunts, etc. And yes, fellow Bond aficionados, that scene is in there.

But the bare bones of the plot are the same. The casino is now in Montenegro and they’re playing poker instead of Chemin de Fer. Casino Royale makes up the middle half of the film, with Bond trying to bankrupt terrorist financier Le Chiffre (the rather excellent Mads Mikkelsen) at the eponymous casino.

Over the course of the film, he slowly gets carved into something more like the Bond we’ve come to know.Ĭasino Royale as a movie is an interesting combination of film Bond and the Bond of the book. Bond isn’t even a 00 until the (admittedly not very good) title sequence rolls he doesn’t know whether he’d like his Vodka Martinis shaken or stirred he makes loads of mistakes and he has rubbish taste in dinner jackets. Since Casino Royale was the world’s introduction to James Bond, it seems fitting that this, the last of the Bond books to be filmed by Eon Productions, should be a reboot of the series.

Throw Sean Connery to one side (if you can): there’s a newer, better Bond in town. No, I’m not talking about Casino Royale itself, although that’s certainly in the top five Bond films*.

Strange night at the casino movie