Casino Royale

A film that restarts the Bond series. The opening is in black and white. Bond kills two people, and with those two deaths earns his double zero status; he has only just been given it. A chase in Madagascar. It runs over cranes on a building site and Bond is crude, impatient and conspicuous. The trail leads to a banker. Le Chiffre manages money for terrorist organisations, and having lost an investment he sets up a poker tournament in Montenegro to cover it. The Treasury sends an accountant. Vesper carries the money and their first conversation takes place in a train compartment. From there the film sits down at a table. The tournament is at the centre and there is a knife fight in a stairwell in between. What the narrative is interested in is not action but trust: the second half is entirely between Bond and Vesper and the last section takes place in a building in Venice. There is a torture scene and it is unusually bare; the narrative makes no effort to protect its hero. The source is Ian Fleming's first Bond novel. The card game was changed; poker was chosen because it was better known at the time. The opening chase is built on parkour, and one of the founders of that discipline plays the man being chased. The casting of the new actor drew hard criticism before release; after the film appeared the argument reversed completely. Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench and Jeffrey Wright are in the cast. Martin Campbell directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants hardness and character out of a spy film. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the classical Bond air; the film deliberately avoids the gadgets, the jokes and the usual formulas.