James Bond 007: CASINO ROYALE | A QUICK REVIEW

2006's Casino Royale is one of those rare, well-done action movies that actually offers more than it is expected at first glance. Bear in mind most of the Bond films are based in the Ian Fleming's novels, but as such, most gave themselves to vast artistic freedom for commercial purposes, and with that, we ended up with reiterative plots, one after another.

Casino Royale is a re-installment of all the previous monotonous saga that culminated with Pierce Brosnan, in fact, its source material was Bond's first novel/adventure.
I'm recalling this movie because of the upcoming 'No Time to Die', which looks very promising, not to mention it has True Detective creator Cary Fukunaga as its director.

The movie starts straight away as Bond being an MI6's rookie agent who just had achieved the double 0 killing, we got the typical Bond traits: a natural-born charmer, cold-hearted, calculating and objective mysoginist with an impeccable sense of fashion. However, he's no untouchable, actually he gets hurt a lot during the mission he's sent to do. This is a picture of Bond before he really was MI6's most prestigious and utterly unstoppable field agent.

Daniel Craig's rendition makes a very reckless and masculine character who is really challenged through the first half of the film, and we get to somehow symphatize with in the second half of it.

At the center of the film we have Vesper Lynd -played by Eva Green-, a British Treasury agent who collaborates with Bond, and equals Bond in witty, intelligence and flirtatious play. Definitely not a weak character. She's such a fascinating and secretive, but ultimately sensitive character even Bond begins to slowly fall in love with her, much to his surprise, and ultimately soften him a real deal.

The main villain is Le Chiffre -portrayed by Danish Mads Mikkelsen-, an uncaring accountant who finances terrorism for an elite organization -later known as Quantum- and has a bet with Bond at a poker game in the film's title place.

Things go unexpectedly wrong, and Bond is forced to leave his ego behind and his confidence after he loses the game, gets poisoned, almost dies from it and almost gets killed by disguised hitmen. Not to mention Le Chiffre tortures him in a very memorable and cruel scene. And after that there's a whole new layer of plot you would never have expected, unless you've already read the source novel.

Overall, Casino Royale brings a new, more mature take on the untouchable superhero myth that has been brought and glamourized into the screen since the early 60's. (This film is glamourized, but doesn't see Bond's actions as beautiful and ideal to follow)

It brings daredevilish stunts -you never get bored-, elegant cinematography, a modest variety of gorgeous locations, great moments of tension, and we get to witness the transition of Bond's most accesible and competitive personality to his most damaged and cold survival figure. There's this powerful display of tragedy and delusion that he decides to ultimately repress, and seeing him as an unexperienced pawn in a much bigger game makes the movie more than worth watching.