You know the name. You know the number.

For my birthday my lovely lady pulled her second surprise of the week (more on the first later) and took me to the cinema where I witnessed something truly wonderful in the proper sense of the word. Martin Campbell, Neal Purvis & Robert Wade set out to rejuvinate the franchise with a more pared-down, back-to-basics approach and, I'm overjoyed to say, they've delivered the goods. The hype had told me that this was gonna be great, I'd always thought their choice of actor was inspired despite how the sheer volume of doubters and their pitiful calls for the film to be boycotted (I'd felt the same way when Christopher Ecclestone was announced as the new Doctor) and the whole premise of taking it back to the very first book was simply genius.
And you know what, it works. Casino Royale is, quite possibly, the finest Bond film I have ever seen. It's just incredible. Daniel Craig owns the screen (despite some truly scene-stealing moments from Judi Dench and frankly, if you're gonna loose scenes to anyone...) and portrays a grittier, more naive, more vulnerable and therefore more dangerous Bond than any actor before. He's arrogant and makes mistakes, he's flawed and mis-judges situations, when he fights it's realistic, scrappy, far from pretty and he bleeds - a lot. I'll get shot down in flames for this but, if Bond 22 is as good as this one then, I'm sorry Connery lovers, but Danny-boy could very well be THE James Bond. Read the early books and you'll see what I mean.

Anyhow, I'm not writing a lengthy review here, you should go and see it yourselves and make up your own minds but be warned - if you love the campness, the multitude of Bond girls, the quippy one-liners, the overblown effects, the gadgets and the invisible car bollocks then you may very well be disappointed. Funny really, my favourite Bond was always Moore so by my own argument I should've loathed this film but I didn't, I loved it.