Daniel Craig stars as Bond in this back to the beginning bond film that takes place as bond gets his double 0 status. Directed by the same guy who did Golden Eye, Martin Campbell, this slick gritty universe reset to the bond franchise is well put together and has some good performances.

Through a series of contrivances nasty blood crying blind in one eye banker to terrorists Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) loses a hundred million of his client's money, down to Bond foiling his dastardly scheme. These not being the sort of people you can just say sorry to, he is understandably keen to recover the funds. This is where the casino of the title comes in, they are running a high stakes poker game where the winner takes home a hundred million dollars, bond must beat him so he will be forced to tell the intelligence services what he knows in exchange for protection. Add in some violence some explosions and some attractive ladies and bake at gas mark 6 for 144 minutes.

Much has been said on the subject of Mr. Craig as the new bond, I thought he was rather good. He looks like the sort of bloke you would send to kill someone, and he is definitely the toughest bond since Connery he may even be a tad tougher.

On the whole this is a very gritty film with lots of violence and stunt set pieces. It starts out fairly extreme and mostly keeps going, though it does seem to loose its way a touch in the middle. The cast is good Mr. Craig walks a fine line between cool customer and deranged psychopath; he looks the part and delivers the dialog well. The bad guy , played by Mads Mikkelsen, is reasonably bad yet in some ways less cartoonish than these villains typically are we have some feel for his motivations. Bonds main lady Vesper (Eva Green) is well played with subtly handled performance not a complete caricature as is often the case. Judi Dench reprises her role as M.

There's less of the silliness that seemed to have become a feature of recent bond films. There are elements of comedy or light relief in there sure, but there's less of what I would describe as "winking at the audience" that had become the norm for Bond films of late. Overall it's a far more serious film with dialog that is well crafted and on the whole well written,less of an over the top fantasy spy film. It also takes the opportunity to play with your expectations.

It's not a completely traditional bond film with the villain trying to take over the world from a flying hollowed out space volcano submarine, but this is a good thing. It will be interesting to see where they take this new bond but I think they are off to a good start.

Its probably worth mentioning before I start that I haven't seen any recent bond films (Goldeneye on) before this one. The reason for this wasn't any deliberate avoidance of the series, but more the fact that I always though of Bond films as ones you watch at Christmas and bank holidays. The idea of going to see one in the cinema was bizarre somehow.

This isn't just another film, this is the much hyped reinvention of the series. The trailer seemed markedly different from those I'd seen for the preceding films, so it warranted a watch. Evidently.

The opening section is shot in black and white, which does seem to lend some atmosphere to the scene, a before and after feel which fits the material well. While violence is definitely part of the Bond set, the fight here doesn't have the same "Bond having a fistfight" feel to it.

This is, I think, a good thing. Its considerably more gritty, and I got the feeling that rather than engaging in a spot of sparring practice he was actually having a fight with the opponent. That while he is damn good at what he's doing, it is possible, just possible, that he might lose. As he is a bit green at this point it may just be that he hasn't had enough practice yet.

We then move on to a stunningly executed parcours chase scene, setting the plot into motion. In the film as a whole, it feels like we've moved away from the nice black and white, good and bad, Bond vs. henchmen in colour coordinated jumpsuits that was par for the course in the bond films of yore. The people involved have motivations and behave in a way that is altogether more believable .

Something I like about the film is that while Craig lays the role as almost belligerently confident, he is actually overconfident. His confidence is a flaw. Other Bonds had the same level of confidence, but it always seemed to me that they were that confident because it was all so easy. They were so unbelievably good that it had almost beome boring to them, and if anything went wrong then it was something completely beyond their control. While its possible that "Nobody does it better" than Bond played by Craig, its quite evident that even if that is the case, even the best can fail.