Bond at his Best

For my money, Casino Royale is the best Bond film ever made. Bond of late has been more about the gadgets and wry one-liners than it has been about the characters or plots. What we have here is a back to basics Bond, a gritty killer with a gun and his guile and nothing else.

We open with Bond achieving his double-O status by killing two people. This is shot in choppy black and white which makes the deed feel ugly and brutal, which is exactly what it is. This isn't a Bond who coyly kills three-dozen henchmen and tosses line over his shoulder with a wink and a smile. This is a Bond that knows the finality of death.

Bond is dispatched by M (Judi Dench on witheringly icy form) to do his country's dirty work. He's to track down Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), banker to the villains of the world. Both enter a high-stakes poker tournament; Le Chiffre to recover money from a deal gone wrong and Bond to stop him getting his hands on the cash. He's funded by and chaperoned by a treasury official, the smouldering Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), surely one of the most attractive Bond girls to grace the screen.

What follows is a tense poker game which plays around with all the traditional Bond conventions – Martinis, car chases, gorgeous girls, high stakes and all out action.

Daniel Craig does a superb job as the emerging 007. He's a flawed Bond, one that makes mistakes, gets hurt and realises that his actions have consequences. The slick detachment of the recent Bonds has been replaced by a fragility and humanity that you can see draining away as the film progresses.

Casino Royale is exactly what the franchise needed: a swift kick in the pants. If it weren't for this film, it'd only be a matter of time before Bond was saving the world with his Breitling watch whilst doing adverts for Diet Coke. This is what Bond should be all about: gritty realism, thrilling adventure, frantic action and substance. Shaken or stirred? Both.