Overview
Casino Royale is the twenty-first James Bond film in the series franchise and was directed by Martin Campbell. This is the third screen adaptation of Ian Fleming's novel, which was also the first James Bond novel. It was also the debut of Daniel Craig in the titular role and was a reboot of the entire franchise.
Plot
Le Chiffre is a banker with the utmost discretion. He has to be. Since he happens to be the personal banker to several notable terrorists and clandestine organizations. But what not even his murderous clientele know is that he's been secretly using their money to short-sell the stock market by exploiting his insider knowledge of terrorist activity and pocketing the sizable profits for himself.
Until his latest financial shenanigans fails thanks to a daring and debonair secret agent with a new license to kill, James Bond of MI-6 who barely manages to foil the terrorist plot. Now, Le Chiffre is nearly bankrupt with a lot of terrorists who will be soon demanding their lost money. Desperate to recoup his losses, Le Chiffre enters a high stakes poker game at the fabulously exclusive Casino Royale in Montenegro.
And giving MI-6, an interesting opportunity: if a player can bust Le Chiffre's pot, he will have little choice but to plead for protection from his own clients.
It's a high-stakes gamble that only their best and brightest can dare to raise the stakes on. But that's never been a problem for Bond!
But Le Chiffre is not going down without a fight. And he's never been one to shy away from whatever underhanded and deadly trick to win. And since his life is literally on the line, he will do whatever it takes to win this deadly high stakes poker tournament. Because in this final showdown, everything is on the line.
Cast
- Daniel Craig as James Bond
- Eva Green as Vesper Lynd
- Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre
- Judi Dench as M
- Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter
- Giancarlo Giannini as Rene Mathis
- Simon Abkarian as Alex Dimitrios
- Caterina Murino as Solange Dimitrios
- Ivana Milicevic as Valenka
- Isaac de Bankole as Steven Obanno
- Jesper Christensen as Mr. White
- Sebastien Foucan as Mollaka
- Tsai Chin as Madame Wu
- Tobias Menzies as Villiers
- Clemens Schick as Kratt
- Veruschka as Grafin von Wallenstein
- Alessandra Ambrosio as Tennis Girl
- Christina Cole as Ocean Club Receptionist
Production
Reception
Trivia
- Casino Royale was the first James Bond novel written by Ian Fleming and he subsequently sold the rights for filming independently to Gregory Ratoff. Eon Productions later purchased filming rights to the rest of the franchise and also attempted to acquire the rights to Casino Royale as well but negotiations broke down and they subsequently decided to start filming adaptations to the other novels while Ratoff's heirs pushed forward a satire movie, Casino Royale (1967) loosely based on the novel. Thus for decades, the legal rights remained tied up until they lapsed which allowed Eon to finally film a new, updated version of Casino Royale and ironically, making it the last ever James Bond adapted movie as Ian Fleming's later 007 novels had all been already adapted to film.