Picture Courtesy of Nickslidepics
Casino Royale is the 21st Bond film but due to some legal wrangling between studios in the sixties, it is actually based on the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond books. Due to this, the Bond we see here, excellently handled by Daniel Craig, is much less polished Bond, a lot more gruff, quite egotistical and prone to a few errors in judgement.
The plot of the film centers around a villain known as ‘Le Chiffre’ (The Number), who uses engineered acts of terrorism to make profits off of borrowed money on the stock market. When Bond scuppers a couple of these plans, Le Chiffre is left in serious debt to some extremely unsavoury types and decides the best way to recoup his money is by way of a huge high stakes poker tournament, to which Bond is sent.
The tournament itself is handled quite well with nice chunks of fast paced action interspersed with the tense drama provided by the high stakes poker hands. 8/10
