When Daniel Craig was announced at the new 007 in 2005, people baulked at whether he could follow in the footsteps of Pierce Brosnan, who had taken the role to an even more global success from his debut in GOLDENEYE (1995) to DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002). With Brosnan now entering a new age, the film-makers decided when the rights were available to remake CASINO ROYALE, previous done as a TV play in 1954 and a rogue spoof Bond in 1967 the same year the fifth official Bond outing, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE came out the same year.
A lot of people’s interpretation was based on the films, rather than the source material of the original Ian Fleming novels, which are a bit darker than the films have produced over the years and actually CASINO ROYALE is one of the more faithful adaptations of a Bond novel, which was the first ever Fleming novel to be published in 1053.
This goes back to the origins of Bond and was among a lot of the origin stories that were emerging on the big-screen at the time (BATMAN BEGINS for example was another one that subverted the expectation of what a classic hero could be)
After a pre-credit sequence where Bond kills a contact to an MI6 selling secrets for money, then the contact itself, the film cuts to Uganda where Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) is making a deal with a revolutionary to use millions of money to buy shares in an airline that he is planning to bankrupt by blowing up their latest model.
In Uganda Bond is out in the field and pursues a bomber to his local embassy where he proceeds to wreak havoc. Unfortunately, his exploits have attracted unwanted attention and M (Judi Dench) tells him to ‘go and bury his head in the sand somewhere’
On forced leave, Bond heads to the Bahamas, where he meets Demetrios (Simon Abkarian) whom he beats in a poker game at the Ocean Club where they both stay. Demetrios has ties to Le Chiffre and in a bid to get a sense of the game, Bond seduces his wife Solange (Caterina Moreno), who informs him that her hushand is on the way to Miami, where the next phase of the adventure awaits….
The book is not all that long and this film version, compared to the 1967 version which was all out comedy spoof with the likes of David Niven and Woody Allen in the cast with a director like John Huston at the helm, is more grittier and fleshes out the plot to be more of a Bond spectacular, which it certainly is, be it the opening pre-credits in black and white and the airport chase is a edge-of-seat sequence
The card game and torture scene from the book are retained and Craig makes a damn fine debut