Casino Royale

Hey, good job reviving your franchise! I kept reading that this was a "grittier" James Bond, but I didn't really see that. They gave us a more human scale Bond than recent films had offered and, most importantly of all, made it genuinely sexy instead of all fake-sexy. They also kept up a reasonably coherent story where you were actually interested to see what happened. That said, the central poker game narrative didn't really make sense to me.

In a minor way, good for Bond for hitting that straight flush, but why did he see the flop at all holding a seven and eight of spades or whatever the hell he had? Beyond quibbling, as best I understood the caper, it wasn't actually necessary for Bond to win the tournament, MI-6's priority was just to make Le Chiffre lose. And around the table, you had not only Bond, but also a friend from Langley along with sundry other characters. It seems like it would be much easier to have Bond and the CIA guy consipre with a third party to help the third party win. And for that matter, why the poker gambit at all? Why not just capture Le Chiffre when they knew where he was going to be? I mean, that's the kind of thing you get, I guess, but that kind of thing bothers me. Just a throwaway line from M about "our relationship with Bulgaria is very sensitive at the moment, and we can't afford another incident" or whatever could have pseudo-explained this away.