Review: Casino Royale (2006)

As you’re reading this the latest James Bond film, simply titled “Skyfall”, is busy being a money making machine and picking up a ton of critical buzz. Many people are calling it the best Bond flick ever. I have yet to see it but I plan doing so in this weekend. In the meantime I thought it be a great way to warm up for the movie by watching and reviewing every single Bond film leading up to Skyfall…but then I realized that would be a huge undertaking and I’m lazy as hell. Instead I figured we’d look at the films that led up to the new one; namely the Daniel Craig era.

In leading up to 2006 Pierce Brosnan, the actor how had been playing Bond, stepped down from his role. The search for the new Agent 007 also lead to the studio deciding to toss out the baby with bath water and just reboot the whole franchise. This bothered a lot of fans. Things got worse when it was announced that Daniel Craig would be taking over lead character role. I guess he was too blond or something. I forget because it was something like seven years ago. Anyway in the spirit of starting over the new flick was going to be based on original creator Sir Ian Flemming’s first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. It was directed by Martin Campbell, who also directed GoldenEye…which I really disliked.

 I am not a traditional Bond fan as I’d only seen a few of the films in the series and beyond Goldfinger I haven’t loved them. I especially wasn’t very keen on Brosnan’s films at all. But I remember being very intrigued by all the hullabaloo with this flick and I actually went to the theaters to see it; the first time I’d ever paid to see a James Bond movie. So were all the changes worth it?

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: There are some spoilers but it's not too bad and, really, this movie came out six years ago. Get over it.]
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