Casino Royale 06 (4K Ultra UHD/Blu-ray) [4K UHD]

When last we left him in 2002's Die Another Day, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan), armed with an invisible Aston Martin, a gun-toting Halle Berry at his side, had just defeated a face-changing Korean colonel and his giant space laser.If that description elicits more of a groan than a gasp, you're not alone. After forty-plus years of cinematic spectacle, it's easy to understand why Agent 007's recent adventures haven't done very much to leave expectant audiences shaken or stirred.It wasn't always like this, of course. There was a time when a James Bond movie represented the pinnacle of filmmaking -- both unceasingly innovative and wildly subversive at the same time. With their unparalleled technical prowess coupled with heaping helpings of violence, action, and innuendo, the early Bond films forged the path that nearly all commercial blockbusters follow to this very day.But then, that was a long time ago.By the time I watched my first Bond, 1979's Moonraker, the series was firmly ensconced in the (quite-successful, mind you) Roger Moore-era, and had long since traded in narrative trailblazing for a kind of baseline consistency and an insistent clinging to formulaic repetitiveness. And yet, there was something oddly reassuring about it. It was just one of those things. Every couple of years, you'd go to the theater, that strobe light/gun barrel opening would come up, and you'd watch 007 save the world yet again. It didn't have to be a good movie; it just had to be a Bond movie.Well, it's taken awhile -- several decades, in fact -- but with the release of Casino Royale, the 22nd film in the invincible series, we can finally, definitively say that the two are no longer mutually exclusive. James Bond is back, and as it turns out, he's been gone a lot longer than anyone even realized.As soon as the lights go down, before the opening credits even start, we know right away that something is different. What is it? That famous opening shot. The gun barrel motif that has signaled the beginning of every official Bond movie from 1962's Dr. No until now -- it's not there. And just like that, all our preconceptions of what to expect are kicked to the curb.When you think about it, the Bond producers have done something that's really unprecedented for a series as successful as this has been (each of the four Brosnan entries made more money than the last) -- they've dared to buck tradition and go in a new direction, winding the clock back for a Batman Begins-style reboot, giving us a ground-up look at James Bond's first mission.Taking its title and basic plotline from Ian Fleming's 1952 debut 007 novel, the film revolves around a high-stakes poker game that the wet-behind-the-ears Bond (Daniel Craig) is recruited to participate in against terrorist broker Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen).It's a straightforward affair, with none of the standbys we've come to know and expect from these things -- no banter with Q, no fancy gadgets (nary an invisible car to be seen), no innuendo-laced banter with Miss Moneypenny, and an honest-to-gosh love story with new Bond girl Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) dropped down right smack in the middle.This is the Bond formula stripped bare, and every frame bespeaks the joy of rediscovery, with the gleeful abandon that comes with freedom from the stultifying sameness that has crippled this franchise for the past twenty-some years.As embodied by Daniel Craig, far-and-away the best actor to don the trademark tux since it was doffed by Sean Connery in 1971; the character is more meat-and-potatoes than caviar and escargot, and for the first time in seemingly ever we get a sense of the raw brutality and casual cruelty that drives him.Paradoxically, Craig also makes him far more real than he's ever been by also showing us a vulnerable side to this heretofore unshakable assassin. This is no easy task, as both Timothy Dalton and Brosnan before him tried and failed to lend some much needed gravitas to the usual 007 derring-do.At just under two-and-half hours in length, Casino Royale is longer, even, than the George Lazenby-starring On Her Majesty's Secret Service (one of the best in the series), and yet, from a breathless opening footchase in Madagascar to a cat-and-mouse game in Miami to a showdown in the canals of Venice, it remains utterly involving for its entirety.Much of the credit for this can go to star Craig, who electrifies from his first scene, as well as director Martin Campbell. Campbell, who also helmed Pierce Brosnan's 1995 007 debut, GoldenEye, also seems to have benefited greatly from the franchise's reinvention, employing a style here very clearly beholden to such recent spy outings as the Jason Bourne movies (as evidenced by a visceral bathroom brawl before the opening credits, depicting Bond's first kill).Ultimately, it's a bit of a wait before we finally hear Craig utter that most famous of lines -- "Bond. James Bond." -- the whole movie, in fact. But by the time he gets there, and by the time we first hear Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme," we realize that the usual promise at the closing credits that "James Bond Will Return," has finally transcended the constraints of the familiar and become something it hasn't been in quite awhile: something worth getting excited about. Good show, 007. A

One of my favorite movies, and I got the opportunity to share it with someone for their first ever Bond movie. Purchased because I was too lazy to dig out the disk.

I hate to admit it but I was one of the many people who were against Daniel Craig playing James Bond in Casino Royale. I was still upset with how Pierce Brosnan had been treated by the producers of the "Bond" series, plus I felt if anyone could take Brosnan's place, it was Clive Owen. I'd seen Daniel Craig in The Road to Perdition, Laura Croft: Tomb Raider and Munich, but I just couldn't picture him as 007. I'm happy to report, however, that he completely won me over with his realistic portrayal of James Bond in Casino Royale. Though I won't say that Craig is better than Sean Connery (after all I grew up with Sean Connery playing Bond back in the early sixties), I will say that he runs a close second place with Pierce Brosnan. Certainly Craig has the best physical body of anyone to play this character, and the fight and action scenes are hard, fast, and utterly breathtaking. I expect and look forward to seeing Craig in the next two-or-three "Bond" movies.As everyone knows by now, Bond gets his "00" status at the beginning of Casino Royale after making two kills. He's then assigned to capture a terrorist bomber in the hopes of learning who the man's boss is. This leads to one of the most exciting action sequences in "Bond" history, not to mention the public's first look at the art of "free running," which is astounding to behold. Later, when back in England, a disgruntled "M" puts her new "00" agent on a leave of absence, warning him that he basically needs to get his act together, or else. Bond takes it upon himself to track down the boss of the terrorist bomber, and this eventually leads him to Le Chiffre, the financier for the world's leading terrorist organization that's led by a man known only as Mr. White. Bond and Le Chiffre will go head to head in a battle of skill and wits during a high stakes Texas Hold'em game. We're talking about a game where the winner will take home over a hundred million dollars. During all of this, Bond will have to battle a couple of angry Africans with a rather big machete, survive a poisoning attempt, and more importantly grow to love the woman who's been assigned to work with him, Vesper Lynd. Before the end of the movie is reached, however, Bond will learn what real pain is while being tortured and then again through a terrible act of betrayal. As "M" later tells him, learn to trust no one.Casino Royale was definitely one of the best movies of 2006, and Daniel Craig pretty much won the hearts of most of the "Bond" fans, including myself. Though there were a few things about the film that I didn't understand (why was Judi Dench chosen to play "M" at the beginning of Bond's career when she didn't actually come into the picture till his later years and why have him win the Aston Martin DB-5 in a poker game, when the car was actually provided for him by MI-6's Q Branch back in Goldfinger?), it doesn't take away from the sheer fun of watching the movie. Eva Green is just as lovely as Vesper Lynd as she was in The Kingdom of Heaven, and Giancarlo Giannini was the ideal choice to play Mathis. I've never heard of Mads Mikkelsen, but he was also perfect as the villain, Le Chiffre. All in all, Casino Royale is a fantastic addition to the "Bond" franchise. It's certainly a film that you'll want to watch over and over again. The two-disc DVD edition includes three featurettes: Becoming Bond, which runs around twenty-five minutes in length and has an interview with Craig about the challenges he faced in taking on the role, James Bond: For Real, which is also about twenty-five minutes long and goes into the making of the movie and how some of the stunts were done, and Bond Girls Are Forever, which was about fifty minutes in length and deals with many of the lovely ladies who have appeared in the "Bond" movies since Dr. No. This was quite enjoyable to watch and had interviews with Ursula Andreas, Honor Blackman, Jill St. John, and a score of others. Last on the DVD is a music video of Chris Cornell singing the theme song to Casino Royale. I wasn't overly impressed with the song, though the rest of the music works well with the film. If you're a "Bond" fan, then Casino Royale is a must for your movie library. I've already watched the DVD twice since getting it in the mail a few days ago. Needless to say, this movie is Highly Recommended.