We had a marvelous evening last night (thanks for babysitting, Mom!) watching Daniel Craig bounce over a construction site in Madagascar, demolish a Venician historic house, wreck yet another Bond car, have his gonads pulverised while make witty quips and and generally portray an excellent Bond. John and I are both fans of the books, which we were given by his grandmother (she still prefers Connery) and were awaiting with trepidation the launch of the most recent film in desperate hopes that it would be at least watchable.

It was beyond watchable and soars into the realm of rewatchable and definitely get-the-video-able. Craig had a superior control of his facial expressions (likely due to his vast stage experience) and the filmmakers did an excellent job of fully utilising this ability to enhance the multi-dimensionality of Bond’s character. He’s cold, but not just cold. He’s funny, but never entirely relaxed. He’s a “blunt instrument” according to M, but you get the feeling that he and the viewer know he’s something more and that even M knows, but just doesn’t want to admit that the man is extremely clever and intuitively puts ideas and clues together in the blink of an eye.

It was an excellent movie. If you know the book at all, you’ll remember that Casino Royal has several mini-climaxes as opposed to one big blast at the end. That is the case in this rendition. Just when you thought things were over, they rolled along to another revelation.

Excellent film, fabulous action, not insanely gory, fairly true to the book (except that he plays poker as opposed to Baccarat and a few other slight modernisations like cellphones and terrorists make there ways in) and generally watchable and entertaining in just about every way.

An aside: A lot has been said about the physical attributes of Craig. I believe the phrase “eye candy” has cropped up here and there. If you like slightly bulkily-muscled men, this’ll hold. If you prefer a leaner, lighter-weight Bond, as do I, Craig’s musculature may seem a little out of place.