Casino Royale: Critic Reviews

Casino Royale is the best Bond film in thirty years. Daniel Craig brings a toughness and edge long absent from the role.

In Casino Royale, Bond is still learning to tame his impulses into a style, and he's all the more dangerous because of it.

The latest James Bond vehicle finds the British spy leaner, meaner and a whole lot darker.

By the end of a curiously back-to-front film, when he finally gets his theme tune and introduces himself -- 'Bond. James Bond' -- he, like the creaky franchise itself, seems profoundly unsure whether he is coming or going.

[Craig's] portrayal feels grittier and more complex than previous 007s. This is also partly the result of a better script, by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Oscar winner Paul Haggis, as well as top-notch directing by Martin Campbell.

Half an hour too long and with too many villains we really can't place in the plot, Casino Royale nevertheless proves you seldom go wrong if you make a movie that leaves you stirred, not shaken.

Let the purists squawk: In Daniel Craig, the Bond franchise has finally found a 007 whose cruel charisma rivals that of Sean Connery.

To say Casino Royale ranks among the best Bond offerings is not intended as backhanded praise.

Fans of anyone other than Sean Connery who has played James Bond may want to look away, because admirers of Ian Fleming's 007 novels are almost bound to agree that Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Sean.

It's The Spy Who Came In From the Warmth.

What, no jet packs? No world-conquering supervillains orbiting the planet? No preference for shaken martinis?

The tone isn't as cute or vapid as most installments; it's actually a little sinister compared with any recent Bond.

You don't need a weatherman to tell you the 21st installment in the franchise brings an invigorating chill to the air.

I hope Craig finds more moments like that in Bond. And I hope he gets to wear that tuxedo again and again and again.

Casino Royale, though half an hour too long, is the first semi-serious stab at Fleming, and at the treacherous terrain that he marked out, since On Her Majesty's Secret Service, in 1969.

Casino Royale has the answers to all my complaints about the 45-year-old James Bond series, and some I hadn't even thought of.

Meet the new Bond, not the same as the old Bond -- and thank God for that.

A renewed sense of engagement informs director Martin Campbell's tough, absorbing adaptation of the 1953 Ian Fleming novel, the one that started the whole 007 business.

The script updates Ian Fleming's first Bond novel to a post-9/11 world and scales back the silliness that always seems to creep into the series.

You who carped that the 007 films had devolved into a catalog of fresh gadgets and stale puns, eat crow. You who said that the Austin Powers superspy spoofs made James Bond irrelevant, behave.

Casino Royale takes a huge gamble that moviegoers are ready for a fresh take on James Bond. And it wins the bet.

Casino Royale tries to have it both ways, moving toward the genuine while still grasping for the outlandish. The result is a film that's caught between caution and abandonment. And that's probably not a place where James Bond wants to be.

The movie also travels the dark path of the book, which I won't detail here, but just know that Bond has to suffer for his art.

I consider Daniel Craig to be the most effective and appealing of the six actors who have played 007, and that includes even Sean Connery.

Casino Royale sees Bond himself recharged with fresh toughness and arrogance, along with balancing hints of sadism and humanity, just as the fabled series is reinvigorated by going back to basics.