Casino Royale

Review by: Doc

This movie give us the story of how Bond became Bond...
As one of the “blonde Bond” skeptics who doubted the casting wisdom of Daniel Craig as the new Bond, let me say openly, Oh was I wrong! Bond is back, blonde, bad, and better than ever.


I took an informal poll among colleagues yesterday who caught the opening over the weekend, and was surprised to find an almost unanimous, “best Bond ever”.


Casino Royale returns to Bond’s roots, It was the only novel to which the Broccoli family didn’t own the rights and was thus made, long ago, as a spoof starring Peter Sellers and, in a trivia question answer to who has played Bond in the past, David Niven. Now the legal morass has been cleared up and the franchise has a new lease on life if this is how it continues.


This movie give us the story of how Bond became Bond. It opens with the killings which give him his 00 status and tells the story of his love for Aston-Martins, his love-em-and leave-em attitude for women, and his taste for martinis.


The best parts are the opening, a black and white flashback of assassinations and the chase. I’ll spoil it no further but to say that they’ve left behind the flashy gimmicks and cutesy repartee and gone back to a mano-a-mano rougher, tougher, colder Bond who is very welcome in my cinematic world.


The worst part… the titles. I do miss the silhouettes and thought the cartoony playing card titles were, well, dumb.


This one gets a very rare 5 of 5 scalpels and a shaken, not stirred, phalanx up.



Doc Hollywood.

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