Casino Royale Gamble Pays Off

Say what you want about Daniel Craig. Call him fugly. Call him unworthy. Say casting him as the sixth James Bond was the biggest mistake ever committed by the Broccolis.

And you know what would be the biggest mistake you'll ever make? Not watching Casino Royale for the same flimsy reasons.

I've seen all James Bond movies, including the first Casino Royale movie which is nothing more than a silly parody of everything James Bond long before Austin Powers. And I can say that--at the risk of being burned at the stake--Daniel Craig is the best Bond ever. Yes, Craig is a better Bond than Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and that joke of a James Bond, George Lazenby (George who?).

And here's why: Daniel Craig gives us a James Bond who's brutal, calculating, raw, tough and vulnerable, cold yet at the same time warm. He bleeds. He gets cut and bruised. And he commits lapses. A number of them. In other words, his James Bond is real. More real than any of the previous 007s could ever hope to be.

So real you could feel every body slam, every fall, every whack in the face and in a more intimate part of James' anatomy in a cringe-inducing torture scene, every bullet that hits its mark in its jaw-dropping action sequences. So real that, unlike previous Bonds, this 007 appears in subsequent scenes with scars from previous battles. And this James Bond doesn't care whether his martini is shaken or stirred.

So Q and his gadgets aren't in the movie. Big deal. They make James Bond nothing more than a flesh and blood Wile E. Coyote anyway. And in Casino Royale, they're hardly missed. An excellent script, tremendous acting, deft direction and good 'ol stunt work more than make up for their absence.

And for the first time, here's a Bond that looks like he's actually going to kill you. Try staring into those deep blue eyes of Daniel Craig's while he's holding a knife and say he doesn't scare the bejesus out of you.


But the most fascinating thing about Casino Royale is that amidst its hardcore stunts worthy of Ong-Bak and Banlieue 13, it manages to squeeze in a believable love story between 007 and Treasury agent Vesper Lind, played by Kingdom of Heaven's Eva Green, who seems to be more beautiful without makeup than she is with lipstick and mascara on. James Bond has been in love before, in George Lazenby's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but this one was much better done. The love between the two is much more palpable, making the inevitable tragic end all the more heartbreaking.

Sure, Casino Royale breaks many Bond traditions. Some even argue that this James Bond is not the James Bond that they're used to seeing. I couldn't agree more. Casino Royale is a far cry from the silly, highly implausible 007 films of the past, James Bond movies filled with cartoonish villains who either want to take over the world (Ernst Stavro Blofeld, in many Bond installments) or kill everyone in it (Hugo Drax, Moonraker).

This James Bond is Hardcore, with a capital H.

And for that, I'm eternally grateful.