MI-6 agent James Bond (Daniel Craig) gains his 00 license-to-kill status by assassinating Dryden (Malcolm Sinclair) and his contact at the British Embassy in Prague. In Uganda, gangster Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) introduces a member of the Lord’s Resistance Army named Steven Obanno (Isaach de Banrolé) to an Albanian banker named Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). Obanno gives 100 million dollars to Le Chiffre to invest, but Le Chiffre cheats him.
In Madagascar, after an amazing chase, Bond blows up an embassy in the process of killing a bomber named Mollaka (Sebastien Foucan). M (Judi Dench), the head of MI-6, scolds Bond for causing an international incident and not taking Mollaka alive. But the information on Mollaka’s phone sends Bond to the Bahamas, where he meets a corrupt Greek Official named Alex Dimitrios (Simon Abkarian) who had hired Mollaka. Bond wins Dimitrios’ vintage Aston Martin in a poker game and seduces his wife Solange (Catarina Murino). He pursues Dimitrios to Miami, where he kills him in self-defence.
At the airport, Bond chases down Dimitrios’ new bomber and stops the destruction of an airliner. Le Chiffre loses Obanno’s money. Thinking that he has been betrayed, he tortures Solange to death. Le Chiffre organises a poker tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. MI-6 enters Bond in the tournament, believing he will defeat Le Chiffre and force him to seek asylum with the British government. Bond is paired with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), a British treasury agent who has ten million dollars to be gambled. They meet with René Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) in Montenegro. Obanno is furious with Le Chiffre for losing his money but allows him to play.
Obanno and his bodyguard attack Bond, but Bond kills them both. Then he loses the ten-million-dollar stake and Vesper will not trust him with more. But CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) stakes Bond if M will let the CIA arrest Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre’s lover, Valenka (Ivana Milicevic) poisons Bond but Vespa helps save his life. Bond wins the tournament. Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper to trap Bond and takes them to an abandoned ship, where he tortures Bond to reveal the password to the bank account containing the winnings, but Bond resists. Mr. White bursts in and kills Le Chiffre but leaves Bond and Vesper alone.
Bond wakes up in the hospital and recovers with Vesper by his side. He has Mathis arrested, falls in love with Vesper, and resigns from MI-6. They sail to Venice, where he learns from M that Vesper has betrayed him. He trails her and is spotted by gunmen who take her captive in a Venetian palace being renovated. Bond shoots the floating devices and the building starts to sink. Vesper is trapped in the elevator, refuses to be rescued, and drowns. Mr. White escapes with the money. Bond learns from M that Vesper had become a double agent because Le Chiffre threatened her lover. She made a deal with White to save Bond. He checks her phone, locates White at Lake Como, shoots him, and introduces himself. “The name is Bond. James Bond.”
The film was directed by Martin Campbell from a script by Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis. After Die Another Day, Eon Productions decided to reboot the series in a darker and more realistic vein and hired Daniel Craig to play Bond. The choice was controversial, but the film was critically acclaimed and became the highest grossing Bond film until Skyfall in 2012.
Casino Royale had been a 1954 TV episode starring Barry Nelson and Peter Lorre, and a spoof starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, and Woody Allen. SONY pictures gave the rights to Eon Productions in exchange for MGM’s rights to Spider-Man. Quentin Tarantino wanted to direct but Eon refused. The stunts were not CGI, which had gone too far, but practical effects. They tried to follow the novel closely, but the name SPECTRE was not their property, so they dropped that reference. Daniel Craig only became interested after reading the script.
Torture scenes were censored in Britain, and in the US two fight scenes were trimmed. The breaking of a man’s neck was cut in Germany, and a torture scene, a fight, and a shot of Daniel Craig cleaning a wound were cut in China. The film received 94% critical approval on Rotten Tomatoes. Craig was compared to Connery and the movie to From Russia with Love. Roger Moore praised Daniel Craig to high heaven. The film was nominated for eight BAFTAs and won for Best Sound, and it was nominated for five Saturn awards. Daniel Craig emerging from the water in blue LaPerla swimming trunks reminded people of Ursula Andress and the shot became iconic. My wife quipped, “He seems fit.” Ironically, Craig was not supposed to come out of the water but had hurt his foot.
The astonishing Parcour chase early in the movie took weeks to film, and there were other great, if brutal, fights and chases. Daniel Craig read all the Bond books and picked the brains of the Mossad and British Secret Service agents hired to advise the production. He also gained twenty pounds of muscle. Ian Fleming bought a gold typewriter when he finished the book, which was later purchased by Pierce Brosnan for $ 20,000. Vesper’s purple gown was by Roberto Cavalli and the black one by Versace. Sir Richard Branson has a cameo in an airport scene, but it was cut out of the versions shown on his competitors’ airlines, except for British Airways.