James Bond is one of those properties where everyone who’s ever seen a Bond film has an opinion about what James Bond “really” is. How do you think of the character? Do you think of the character Ian Fleming wrote, as he appears in the original books? Do you think of him as Sean Connery? Or Roger Moore? Or Lazenby or Dalton? Or have you grown up watching Pierce Brosnan play the role, with everything else just a bunch of “old movies” that your dad likes?

Because any one of those is valid. Any one of those might very well be your favorite because of the order in which you were exposed to things.

For me, James Bond started with THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. It was the first Bond film my dad took me to see in the theater, and I always associated Bond with my dad. It was something I could tell he really loved, the same way I’m sure my son will eventually figure out I’m a shameless STAR WARS nerd. He never pushed James Bond on me or told me I had to like it. But when he took me to THE SPY WHO LOVED ME at the age of seven, it seemed cooler than anything I’d seen at that point. I loved Richard Kiel as a bad guy. I loved the theme song. I loved that enormous set that Karl Stromberg’s henchmen were on. And I totally loved the Lotus Esprit underwater car scene. If you’d asked me then what a Bond film was supposed to do, I’d say, “Whatever SPY WHO LOVED ME does. That’s awesome.” Over time, though, I not only caught up with the rest of the series of films, but I also read the Ian Fleming novels in totally random order. They were always around the house, wherever my dad kept his books, along with his REMO WILLIAMS novels, his John D. McDonald books, his Mickey Spillane, his Chandler. That was the stuff I cut my teeth on, and even when I read them in random order, I had my favorite Fleming novels, and CASINO ROYALE has always been very near the top of the list for me. It’s so stripped down, so well-written, so precise in the way it sets up the character of James Bond. My fondness for it isn’t out of some blind slavish devotion to Fleming; for example, I’m painfully embarrassed by LIVE AND LET DIE’s black patois dialogue, which had to have been blatantly racist even when it was originally published.

No... I love it the way I love certain tellings of the origin of Batman or the origins of Spider-Man or the origins of Superman. I love it because of how clean it is, and how Fleming was very specific in the way he painted this MI6 officer, making him human but also heroic, cold-blooded but for a greater good.

He’s right most of the time, and that gives him license to be a prick. He’s picked for the assignment in CASINO ROYALE not because he’s “the famous James Bond,” as he obviously is in pretty much all the movies. He’s picked because he is ruthless and because he knows the rules to an obscure casino game that is the fetish of a spy that MI6 is particularly interested in, Le Chiffre. They want to put someone in against Le Chiffre, someone who can play him and beat him consistently. They need someone to take Le Chiffre’s money away from him, because they know that the money he’s playing with is not entirely his own, and they’re looking to put him into a situation from which there’s no escape. Bond takes the assignment, and for a while, he becomes the stud James Bond that we all know... the archetype. He becomes the guy in the tux at the table, and he’s starting to really believe he is that guy. Until some bad shit happens. And some more bad shit happens. And James Bond is pushed to his breaking point and beyond. He’s tested as much as any hero, any archetype, has ever been tested. And he makes a brutal, hard choice at the end of the book that proves that he is ready to push forward as an agent, ready to do something else, that he has not only survived these events... but that he has actually changed because of them. That’s the book. It’s pretty great simple iconic stuff. With one of the best last lines of tough guy fiction, a stunner that hasn’t had its impact dulled by time one little bit.

So that’s who I am as a Bond fan. That’s my own bias. That’s my relationship with the previously unfilmed novel. I’m very fond of it, and in theory, I’m all for seeing someone make a reboot of the series using CASINO ROYALE as a starting point. That’s exactly the sort of thing I think the series needs.

Still, I’ve been skeptical about this film all the way through production. I liked the announcement that Daniel Craig would be playing the lead, but everything else about the picture made me nervous.

Tuesday night, I saw the film at The Grove, and I took my co-writer Obi-Swan with me. He’s a fan of the films much more than the books, but has his likes and dislikes within the series. He feels very strongly about the franchise, and he and I both sort of fell out of love with the series a few years ago, convinced that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson would never allow a good film to happen, even by accident, ever again. When the lights went down, we crossed our fingers and quietly prayed the Hail Mary of all optimistic film geeks: “Please don’t suck, please don’t suck, please don’t suck.”

I am flabbergasted to report that everything you’ve heard is true. CASINO ROYALE is the rebirth of James Bond, and it is the first entry in the series since ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE that can be called an excellent film, and not just a “good James Bond movie.” Somehow, the combination of screenwriting team Purvis & Wade (responsible for some of the worst screenplays in the entire series) and the dreaded Paul Haggis has resulted in a lean and efficient script. It not only effectively adapts the Ian Fleming novel, but it also expands up on it in ways that acknowledge the film’s status as a giant franchise action film without compromising any integrity. There are a few choices I’m not crazy about, but overall, I am impressed and amazed. Martin Campbell has stepped up with his best-directed film to date. Campbell is a professional, and I think he does solid work most of the time, but he’s hardly an artist. Here, I think he raises his game, and the result is something special, something with a real pulse, a vital film that absolutely rehabilitates the character and that delivers Daniel Craig to superstardom, fully formed.

CASINO ROYALE the movie gets right the things it absolutely has to get right if it’s going to be considered a real adaptation of the book. The movie is very specific in the way it depicts this MI6 officer, making him human but also heroic, cold-blooded but for a greater good. He’s right most of the time, and that gives him license to be a prick. In the film, he’s not picked for the assignment. In fact, he sort of defies MI6 a bit in his pursuit of it. At first, he’s acting on his own, following some leads and some hunches, pissing off M with his casual abuse of the rules. Once he actually puts some solid intel together, though, MI6 sanctions his actions and assign him the case.

He’s picked here because he is ruthless and because he is “the best poker player in the Service,” which makes him the best candidate to enter a poker tournament opposite a banker for terrorists that MI6 is particularly interested in, Le Chiffre. They want to put someone in against Le Chiffre, someone who can play him and beat him consistently. They need someone to take Le Chiffre’s money away from him, because they know that the money he’s playing with is not entirely his own, and they’re looking to put him into a situation from which there’s no escape. Bond takes the assignment, and for a while, he becomes the stud James Bond that we all know... the archetype. He becomes the guy in the tux at the table, and he’s starting to really believe he is that guy. Until some bad shit happens. And some more bad shit happens. And James Bond is pushed to his breaking point and beyond. He’s tested as much as any hero, any archetype, has ever been tested. And he makes a brutal, hard choice at the end of the film that proves that he is ready to push forward as an agent, ready to do something else, that he has not only survived these events... but that he has actually changed because of them. That’s the movie. Which, like I said, is a surprisingly faithful rendition of the book. It’s pretty great iconic stuff. And although I think they sort of throw away the book’s great last line, they do include it in the film, and then they add an ending that, while not Fleming’s, does something no Bond film has done since I was a kid: it makes me want to see the sequel immediately.

Many people are going to say that this film is a direct reaction to the success of THE BOURNE IDENTITY and the sequel, and that’s probably a part of it, but I think the film that is the more direct influence here is BATMAN BEGINS. Watching CASINO ROYALE, you don’t just see one movie unfold. You also suddenly see a real series ahead, a series that you’re eager to be part of. The last two minutes of this film suggest what we’ll see next time, and it’s an exciting direction. They’ll have to go off-book completely for the first time in the entire franchise, but if they follow the lead of this film, I’m confident they’ll give us another Bond that matters. Do I have some complaints? Sure. I think David Arnold’s opening theme is a decent song, but Chris Cornell is absolutely the wrong choice to sing it. Thankfully, the opening title sequence is a stylish kick, different but somehow a clever nod to the great title sequences of the past.

My biggest problem is one that I’ve had since the script stage: the change from baccarat to poker. It’s literally pointless. The poker in the film doesn’t matter, and having knowledge of the game doesn’t matter. At all. Not even a little bit. Because card games in movies are inherently boring. You know there is no chance involved because it is scripted. The cards are going to be dealt according to drama, not chance. The reason that baccarat simply works better is because it’s so uncommon. No one knows how to play baccarat. Le Chiffre has a fetish for the game because of its obscurity. And when MI6 decides to send someone in to play across from Le Chiffre, there’s really only one guy inside the agency that knows the game well enough to compete. You think it matters what cards turn over on the table between those two guys? No. What matters is what happens between them, and the film gets it right. Campbell directs the poker the best way he possibly can, by making it inconsequential. He’s got the dealer to explain every hand, so you don’t have to know anything about the game, and he directs everything so it’s about the way Bond and Le Chiffre play off each other. It’s just Mads Mikkelsen and Daniel Craig, every gesture loaded with meaning. No invisible cars, no creepy dudes shooting lightning out of their fingers, no CGI or snowboarding. Just two men, both desperate to accomplish something, depending on this civilized warfare across a card table.

Sure, there are stunt sequences. It would not be a James Bond film without them. And they are spectacular. There’s a chase right at the beginning involving Craig and Sebastien Foucan, the first stuntman I’ve ever seen billed in the opening credits as a stuntman. He’s better known as one of the co-developers of Parkour, or Free Running, and if you saw DISTRICT B13, you’ve already seen how cool it can be in an action film. Here, what starts small turns insane, but it never leaves the realm of reality. The real mark of success is that never once during the entire thing did I start thinking about how they did what I was watching. It all appears to be real, and it all looks like it’s Craig and Foucan. I’m sure it can’t be, but it looks like it, and it’s seamlessly shot, one great gag and one great beat after another and another and another. It’s the same thing with the airport set piece; the film ramps up expertly, with Craig just barely getting it done. I like the human side of his James Bond. He’s ferocious, willing to do whatever he has to, but he’s not perfect. He’s not bulletproof.

There’s a fight on a stairwell that I think approaches the brutality of one of the great fights of the whole series, the train fight with Robert Shaw in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, and what makes it so great is the intimacy of it. It’s ugly. And in the aftermath, we can see that Bond is shaken by it, but also in some way, he feels like the moment validates him. It’s what he does. He does it well. When M calls him a “blunt instrument,” she’s not making a joke.

Another thing I really like about the film, and it’s one of the things that makes this a real James Bond film and not just a generic action film using the character name, is that this doesn’t seem to be a cutting-edge 2006 film. There’s no Paul Greengrass-style shaky cam. There’s no rapid-fire flash-cut editing a la Michael Bay. This is not an edgy film. There’s a classic style to the filmmaking. Martin Campbell, like David Arnold, seems to have a genuine affection for the iconography of the franchise. The film fits into the franchise even as it turns it inside out.

Congratulations are in order to everyone involved, and not least of all to Daniel Craig, who took a lot of heat while the film was in production. He kept his head down, and he stayed focused, and the result is a film that should turn him into a superstar. He’s already proven himself to be a gifted and complex actor, but he exhibits effortless charisma in this role, and he plays every face of Bond well. Vicious thug? Check. Shameless flirt? Check. Sarcastic sophisticate? Yep. He’s got it all. As I mentioned at the start of the review, everybody typically likes the Bond they grew up on. I know Roger Moore fans, Timothy Dalton fans, and heaps and heaps of Pierce Brosnan fans. I know OHMSS snobs. I know Connery hardcores. I know people who like every single Bond film indiscriminately. For the first time ever, I can see the potential here for a Bond that can finally unite Bond fans. As long as the films use this movie as a template, things look good.

For the first time since childhood, when I saw the phrase “JAMES BOND WILL RETURN” appear at the very end of the closing credits, I actually applauded. For the first time in a long time, that’s a promise, not an obligation.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles