'Casino Royale' - 3 Scoops (3/4)

movie review

For a long time now, the James Bond franchise has been operating with a license to overkill. That license has been revoked by Casino Royale. It doesn't even feel like a Bond film as we have come to expect them, in their numbing, increasingly gadget-dependent gigantism. No death rays from space this time. No invisible car. For once, most of the laws of physics are given due respect.

A renewed sense of engagement informs director Martin Campbell's tough, absorbing adaptation of the 1953 Ian Fleming novel, the one that started the whole 007 business. Daniel Craig is just right in the role, which has been rethought in ways that connect with the Bond Fleming actually wrote -- not in terms of physical appearance, but in terms of charismatic heartlessness with a hint of a soul underneath.

This isn't one of those Bond entries in which hundreds of extras get mowed down every other set-piece. The violence is rapid, personal, and a key torture sequence relates more to Abu Ghraib than the comparatively ticklish scene in Goldfinger in which Gert Frobe threatens Bond's boys with a laser.

The screenplay is set in the present day, trading the novel's Russian Communist baddies for an Albanian funder of international terrorism. Bond is a hot-tempered newbie in this outing, only lately having earned his hallowed double-0 status. On the trail of terrorist loan shark, Bond botches an assignment in Uganda early on in the picture. It's worth it for the audience: The first extended action sequence has Bond racing, on foot, in pursuit of a bomb maker. The villia is an ace practitioner of "free running." As he darts, leaps and bounds all around a construction site with Bond on his tail, the sequence builds beautifully.

Under the watchful eye of M (Judi Dench) and aided by a fellow operative, Bond arrives in Montenegro with British Treasury functionary Vesper Lynd by his side. There, in the swank hotel and gaming establishment of the title, he squares off in a multimillion-dollar poker game. (It was baccarat in the book.) Also, The romance between Bond and Lynd, played by French actress Eva Green, is taken very seriously.

Casino Royale is not perfect. It's long and the opening-credits sequence is truly lame. But all in all, its the best Bond film since Live and Let Die (1973).