Casino Royale

Movie review from The Movie Snob

Casino Royale (B). Movie Man Mike has already reviewed this rebooting of the Bond franchise, so I’ll be brief. I liked Daniel Craig as the new James Bond, and I liked the idea of going back to the very beginning, making Bond a newly minted double-0 agent who is still a little rough around the edges. Top spy M refers to Bond as a “blunt instrument,” and he certainly is. The character development was unusually good for a Bond film, helping to show how Bond would become the character everyone knows. On the down side are many of the things that are always wrong with Bond films. It was too long. Although the technical gizmos are played down, there are still some pretty ridiculous action sequences. (How many times did 007 successfully run through a veritable blizzard of automatic rifle fire?) And much of the time I was hazy about who was doing what to whom and why, although some of the loose ends are decently tied up at the end. All totaled, I give this movie a 007 out of 10.