Daniel Craig got a lot of hassle over his casting as Bond but not only does he have his youth as an advantage (he's the first 30-something to be cast in the role since Lazenby), he's also pretty damn trim, has the intensity Brosnan lacked and is surprisingly loose in a role that usually requires actors to be stiff and unemotional. I would like something new for a change but Casino Royale does have Bond get hurt and go through more pain than he has previously. But the one-thing that bugs me about action movies, particularly the Bond franchise, is that they are, most of the time, childish male fantasies with an indestructible hero who has fun shooting up the place and beds beautiful women. The longest Bond movie so far, at 145 minutes, but it breezes by even though it reigns in on the normally excessive action scenes and depicts spying a more 'mundane' and 'realistic' manner (or at least as true as the series has been so far). I never expected international espionage to look the way it has in past few Bond outings and I'm glad someone had the balls to go back to the hard-edged nature of the series, last seen in Licence to Kill.

Basically everything that can date Bond film very quickly is gone. Pierce Brosnan has been replaced by a young-ish Daniel Craig, there is no Q, no campy gadgets, no silly naked women silhouettes in the opening credits, no world-dominating super-colossus villains, no Miss Funnyfanny (or whatever), and no silly one-liners after killing bad guys. Casino Royale is a major step-up from the flamboyant Die Another Day.

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