the film that not only breathed life into a dead franchise, but actually made the franchise in question much more interesting, martin campbell's ''casino royale'' (not to be confused with the david niven film of the 1960's, although admittedly that would be fairly unlikely) may draw many lazy comparisons to the bourne films, but i feel that its much closer in tone to the french connection (1971). gritty reinvention is nothing new, but with the bond franchise it actually opened up one of the largely ignored aspects of the original source novels, at the same time as serving a major plot purpose - the concept of a wet behind the ears bond, that would sooner kill than slow down and react ''properly'' to a scenario is one that not only makes perfect sense structure-wise but also conceptually applies to a large number of the intended audience. the emotional engine that the previous films lacked is front and centre in casino royale, gone are the over the top gadgets and the carry-on style humour, a necessary sacrifice in this post-austin powers universe. put simply the bond series couldnt carry on as it had been doing prior to royale, the concept had dated so badly, and had been pastiched to death. it is the aforementioned emotion that is the narrative string that i look forward to following through this new generation of bond films.
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