Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. Bond is back! Back to the beginning of James Bond's career, MI6's newest recruit (Daniel Craig) is tasked with taking down a man known as "Le Chiffre" (Mads Mikkelsen), a money launderer for terrorists who is raising operational funds at a high-stakes poker game in the exclusive Montenegro establishment of Casino Royale... Exhilarating, breathless and at times brutal, this is the first Bond adventure since 1987 to be based on one of Ian Fleming's original novels. Paul Haggis (Oscar winning writer/director of Crash) adapts Casino Royale for a new generation as Daniel Craig, new Aston Martin DBS in tow, fills out the tuxedo of the ultra-smooth and ultra-deadly superspy. For longtime fans of the franchise, Casino Royale offers some retro kicks. Bond wins his iconic Aston Martin at the gaming table, and when a bartender asks if he wants his martini "shaken or stirred," he disdainfully replies, "Do I look like I give a damn?". There's no Moneypenny or "Q," but Dame Judi Dench is back as the exasperated M who, one senses, admires Bond's "bloody cheek." A Bond film is only as good as its villain, and Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre, who weeps blood, is a sinister dandy. From its punishing violence and virtuoso action sequences to its romance, Casino Royale is a Bond film that, in the words of one character, 'makes you feel it', particularly during an excruciating torture sequence. Double-0s, Bond observes early on, "have a short life expectancy". But with Craig, there is new life in the old franchise yet, as well as genuine anticipation for the next one when, at last, the signature James Bond theme kicks in following the best last line ever in any Bond film. To quote Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin, "now I know what I've been faking all these years". --Donald Liebenson