Casino Royale

The best Bond movie ever with also the best performance of an actor to play Bond. We like to romanticize the job Sean Connery did, but he was a model turned leading man at the time who got the role because he had the right look and Cary Grant turned it down. The 60s Bond movies were about the persona of the Bond debonair and coolness. A trite concern. The 60s movies look better because the ones to follow were so bad. Casino Royale doesn't represent a monumental evolution, but has the right elements to make good entertainment. Daniel Craig, an accomplished actor, plays Bond as a young and cocky secret agent still on the way up to true professionalism. The jokes he makes are symptoms of his cockiness, not cultural cool like it was for Connery back in the day. The dilemma at the end of Bond's reluctance to become a secret agent once love challenges his armor is an attempt to infuse a character dimension. The dialogue is ripe for a lesser actor to make the scenes embarassing, but Craig gives it acceptability. Connery developed into an actor, but it would have been bad if he had attempted such a subplot seriously. He was a walking persona who optimized the look of Bond and could half convincly say the words in the script. Craig gets kudos for being a great Bond, but isn't considered the best. That's just because he doesn't look like Connery. See, Connery is the actor everyone wants but most people likely understand a greater dimension is added because of Craig's talent. Casino Royale is also a perfect combination of a 60s Bond movie and the current Bond movie. The 60s movies had longer stories with little action but the new movies have shorter stories with a lot of action. Casino Royale is a record two and half hours. That is the right amount of time to mix the modern action sequences with old plot detail. I'm a Bond enthusiast and actually enjoy elements of Bond through out the decades so it's the perfect mixture.