Best. Bond. EVER.

Not that that's saying much.

My theory about Bond is that the idea of the James Bond character is greater than any of the movies. The best are probably Goldfinger and From Russia with Love. The Connery films (excluding Never Say Never Again, a film which falsified its own title), as well as Lazenby's Her Majesty's Secret Service, had a sixties glamor that holds up well even today. But toward the end of Connery's first run, they started getting campy. In You Only Live Twice, Bond is surgically altered to look Japanese. Or was it Klingon? And his penultimate Bond film, Diamonds are Forever, gave the world an early preview of the aesthetic wasteland that would be the 1970s.

With Roger Moore, the franchise went beyond campy to downright cartoonish. Part of the reason why is the previously mentioned aesthetics of the 1970s and even the early 1980s. When you see Connery's Bond, his clothes and car and those of many of the other characters still look good, albeit in a retro way. Not so with Moore. His clothes look chintzy and garish, and he drives this piece of crap, made by a company that promptly went out of business. But apart from being victimized by their own sense of fashion, the Moore movies were just corny. Exhibit A: the final combat between Bond and Herve Villechaize.

The Dalton films are so unremarkable I've forgotten everything about them, even the titles. And Brosnan made a decent Bond, even though he looks a little sissyish when he runs. But those films were just Bruckheimeresque action flicks, with a few Bondisms thrown in.

All that has changed, now. When I learned that Daniel Craig would be the new 007, I didn't think he looked right for the part. When I heard that Ford would be supplying the cars, I shook my head in disbelief (think Ford will now go the way of AMC?). When it came out that Craig couldn't drive a stick and had to have a stuntman do all the driving, I gave up entirely. But I decided to go see Casino Royale when the reviews came out and saw they were all remarkably strong (here's a good one).

Believe the hype. This is the best Bond movie ever. The biggest improvement is the writing. Gone are the insufferable puns, thank God. In their place is actually interesting and rather witty dialog. It's almost as if the writers thought there might be a few intelligent people in the audience and wanted to avoid insulting them, for a change. The opening title sequence is fantastic--no lascivious sillouettes this time, but great animation playing on card and roulette imagery. The chase scene immediately after the titles is one of the most exciting things ever put on film. And the Bond character is given much greater depth; we see a man who has extraordinary capabilities but also certain vulnerabilities and weaknesses, and who is setting out on a career whose psychological toll he has yet to grasp. Don't get me wrong--this isn't an artsy-fartsy character study film. But the writers realized they could make the action more affecting by developing their characters a bit more than usual. And they succeed. The movie does drag a bit toward the end, but honestly it's such a fun ride that I couldn't complain. So I walked out of the theater convinced that this was the Best bond film ever.

But does Craig give the best performance of Bond? I'd say he gives Connery a run for his money. He fills the role nicely. While he's not a pretty face, he has a different kind of charisma that works well for the role. And when he throws a punch, you believe it, unlike when Roger Moore would employ a Shatneresque karate chop, for example. Craig's Bond is genuinely dangerous, and that's refreshing after decades of fops.