Bond, James Bond

I thoroughly enjoyed this incarnation of Bond. Making grandiose claims for an action adventure franchise would be foolish, but it is hard to quibble with the choices made in ‘Casino Royale.’ You get a much harder edge to Bond with Daniel Craig (actually similar to the excellent but much-maligned first Timothy Dalton outing as Bond), and the external scars that he sports at several points in the movie (you see bruised knuckles several hours after a fight, along with the lacerations to the face) speak to someone who is much more clearly only one step away from an assassin rather than the dandy spy that we have seen in recent years.

The main action sequence comes early in the movie and is utterly satisfying, not least because the guy Bond is chasing appears to have learned his moves from B-13: he climbs impossible surfaces, bounces off hard objects and his body appears made of rubber. Craig huffs and puffs behind him.
Continue reading Bond, James Bond