I liked this  movie - a lot.  I’m not even a huge James Bond movie fan, and with the last Pierce Brosnan installment of the franchise, I had all but given up on the cheesiness of the movie, such as the part where James surfs on a car door or some other piece of a car.  Yeah, I was pretty much done with all that, but then came along the newest, Casino Royale, with a brilliant actor playing the hardened, womanizing agent, Daniel Craig, and a very good actress playing his actual love interest and reason he remains a heartless womanizer, Eva Green.

Eva’s classic beauty and excellent acting only lended more to the movie, that had a solid script, and mind-numbing action sequences.  Not only can Craig act, but he can really do some great action sequences.  He just seems very “fast” and agile, and he added so much more to already well-coreographed action sequences by being present.  The story is also a love story, which shows James falling in love with Green’s character, then being heart broken by a series of events (I don’t want to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it yet), and we see how he becomes cemented in his loner character who seems to float from woman to woman.

We also see James in vulnerable moments, almost dying several times, and also being tortured to the point of almost crying, and this is not something we ever saw in any of the other installments.  The movie is beautifully filmed, with vibrant scenery and excellent location choices that border on exotic.  It actually almost takes you out of the movie, because you fantasize about vacationing in these unbelievably picturesque places.

I hope the next few movies in this series will be as good.  With Craig in the driver’s seat as far as acting, I think we will not be disappointed. He not only has the acting chops, but he also has a penchant for making action scenes look heart stoppingly real, even when fighting with a guy hundreds of feet up.  Nothing looked phony, and I’ll bet the actor took a real beating filming this movie because it looks like he was involved in a lot of the action stunts. 

Oh, Sony obviously paid for a lot of this movie.  You’ll see what I mean when you see it if you haven’t already.  The product placement is obscenely obvious.