Casino Royale

Just how good is this movie? Saw it over the weekend and was seriously impressed. Not to say relieved that the Bond franchise has re-railed itself.

Realising of course that the general public are fickle when it comes to all things Bondian (just how many newspapers, magazines and websites are currently running the "Who was the best Bond ever" poll at present, all of which produce the same predictable results of Connery, followed by Brosnan, followed by Moore, followed by Dalton followed by Lazenby - the last two sometimes changing places, but generally on such low scores that no-one either notices or cares) I feel a little reckless in saying that Daniel Craig may just be rivalling Sean for the top spot. But I really thought he was excellent in the role. And (gasp) sooooooo much better than Pierce Brosnan.

To be honest, something seemed to go wrong with the Bond films from the moment that Licence to Kill failed to be the summer blockbuster of 1989 resulting in a 6 year hiatus on Bond movies (the longest gap between any 2 Bond films). By 1995, everyone had seemed to have forgotten what Bond films were all about and so, as a handy reminder, all of the cliches and double entendres were crammed into the first 15 minutes of Goldeneye. I genuinely thought (and said at the time) that Goldeneye was poor. The 3 that followed were much the same. Pierce Brosnan seemed to play the role as an amalgam of the Connery and Moore interpretations, and in so doing didn't make the role his own, but rather made the role just a blander version of both his main predecessors. Daniel Craig has, admittedly, benefitted from a radical overhaul of the structure of how the film is played out (at no time in the past has the main bad guy been killed off by someone other than Bond), the lack of Q (John Cleese is not suited to Bond at all) and a much more polished script.

And the lack of big name stars (excl. Judi Dench) is also a good thing. After all, how many of the bad guys and Bond girls in the 60s and 70s were big name actors renowned for other things before their Bond roles (Halle Berry, Denise Richards, Robert Carlyle, Sean Bean, etc).

And they even trashed an Aston Martin DBS (in impressive record-breaking style).

So overall, this Bond fan was seriously impressed. Roll on Bond 22....