[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006)

My own first encounter with “James Bond” was that amphibious Lotus Esprit in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. That car, which I remember seeing in television spots, was the sort of thing convinces an eight‑year‑old that adulthood will be a long parade of gadgets and tuxedos. I didn’t even see the movie back then, probably too young, and only saw it later. The first Bond movie I ever saw was FOR YOUR EYES ONLY.

Bond himself was never an obsession for me; he was simply part of the cultural wallpaper. I did not seek him out so much as absorb him through cultural popularity. When the Bond movies came to TV in the 1980s, I watched most of them, and by now, have actually seen them all. Bond was a casual thing for me.

Then 2006 arrived, and with it Daniel Craig, a casting choice that, at the time, caused certain corners of the internet to behave as though EON had personally insulted their families. But EON did something genuinely bold: they didn’t just change the actor, they detonated the entire template. CASIONO ROYALE isn’t a tweak or a course correction like all previous new Bond actors were, CASINO ROYALE is a full-scale reboot, wipe the board and start anew. It is the Bond equivalent of Nolan’s BATMAN BEGINS, only with fewer bats and even more bruises.

Gone are the invisible cars and the physics-defying set pieces from the Brosnan era, gone are the endless one-night stands. In their place: stunts that look as though they were performed by actual humans, fights that leave both participants visibly regretting their life choices, affairs that come with a sense of danger, and a Double‑0 program that feels like a real, and faintly alarming, arm of British intelligence. The film grounds “James Bond” not by stripping away the fantasy, but by giving the fantasy weight by firmly rooting it in reality. Suddenly, there’s something at stake beyond the next martini, suddenly, Bond’s seemingly inexhaustive expense account makes sense and becomes an essential plot device, the stakes high, money can get lost and people get hurt.

CASINO ROYALE was a fresh look at what Bond is and could be. The result: for my money CASINO ROYALE is the best James Bond movie ever made. It’s sharp, muscular, emotionally coherent, and confident enough to reinvent a decades‑old icon without flinching. It’s got enough nods and winks to “classic” Bond, but shows James Bond as a growing character “still in the making”. (Great moment: Bond orders a Vodka Martini, and when asked “Shaken or stirred” replies: “Do I look like I give a damn?”)
For a franchise that once sold me on an underwater Lotus, that’s quite an evolution (even if the child in me still wants that underwater Lotus).
CASINO ROYALE brought back Bond with a vengeance and kicked off a set of movies with an actual continuity and story arc, something Bond previously just did not have.

I re-watched this yesterday in 4K/UHD (the second time I’ve seen it, and I appreciate the movie even more now since the first time I saw it years ago), and found it quite impressive. As I said: best Bond movie ever.