Best Bond Ever

I have to say that I was impressed when I went to watch the latest Bond movie Casino Royale. It had all the perks of an action movie, with the spy intrigue and the works.

Daniel Craig has erased all the critics expectation of him under-performing his role as James Bond. I guess, they like to compare all the Bonds constantly and always remind everyone that Sean Connery was the best Bond, blah, blah, blah. Daniel Craig has brought an edgier, tough, sexy, hunky and blonde Bond into the mix and it has altogether turned out rather well.

There are, in every Bond movie, Bond girls. This time, you have none other than Eva Green aka Vesper Lynd, who was last saw romancing Orlando Bloom in Kingdom of Heaven. Eva Green has a soft beauty to her, although most of the time she's seen with deep eye shadow, she's exceptionally photogenic and has a charming and lovely smile, not enough, dare I say, to launch a thousand ships, but just enough to play a Bond girl lusciously.

The other actress worth mentioning, who's not considered a Bond girl, is Dame Judi Dench. She brings out the sort of authority seen in a lady boss, not quite the dragon lady kind, and at the same time, motherly figure to James Bond's character. She chastises Bond on making mistakes but encourages him at the same time when he's learnt his lessons.

The gambling scenes had just the right tension eased into them to make them believable, perhaps they should show Casino Royale constantly in our casinos when they're up and running in the future?

Despite of that, I do have a few quarrels with the movie I've listed below. However, these are my quarrels, you have to watch the movie and find your own!

Beware, if you haven't watched Casino Royale yet, stop now, spoilers ahead!

1. This is the only Bond movie in which both Bond girls died! UGH!
2. The lengthy plot had too many twists and turns, some of them were rather disjointed, and not well connected edited to connect them seamlessly. This caused some confusion at times, especially who's who, who's the villian etc.
3. The villian's girlfriend usually dies, they never did show how this one died, or if she lived.
4. The Bond villian, Le Chiffre, wasn't evil enough. He lacked charisma and looked pale and weak, bleeding through his eyes. He was a prodigy, but he lacked the tenacity and ego that Elliot Carver had or the focus and resources that Gustave Graves had.
5. The MI6 computer implant in Bond's wrist could scan and tell you the type of poison in your system within a span of 2 minutes or less. I think it was a deriavative of Digitalis, but I can't be sure.
6. The Aston Martin DS5 was destroyed! How could they destroy such a beautiful car?
7. The Aston Martin DS5 comes with defibrillators and antitoxins? Probably in Bond's world only, ours will probably have sunglasses, tons of CDs, street directory, car user manual and parking coupons.
8. There was no Q or any gadgets. Other techie stuff were in the form of SONY notebooks and Sony Ericsson handphones, nice!

Ultimately, a great Bond movie to watch, with added ingredients of male machoism and hand-to-hand combat, that will re-energise the Bond franchise. I was actually getting sick of listening to Pierce Brosnan's sexual innuendoes, probably more from bad script-writing than the actors themselves having to say those lines.

8 out of 10 stars