For the last year or so I’ve been hammering Daniel Craig (“Layer Cake”) as being the absolutely wrong choice to takeover as British secret agent James Bond 007. As much as I’ve liked him as an actor (especially recently in “Infamous”), as Ian Fleming’s sexy-smooth international sensation he just felt off to me. This wasn’t the actor I wanted, not the man I felt was most up for taking over the job.

And I was wrong. Craig is a thrilling Bond, maybe the best ever. For a girl raised on the glories of Sean Connery it must be admitted this guy fits the part top to bottom better than anyone who has come before. Combining Connery’s smoldering stoicism with Timothy Dalton’s lethal aura and elegantly mixing it with Pierce Brosnan’s stunning good looks, this incarnation of the character is borderline fantastic. Craig brings an animal magnetism not seen in the series since “From Russia with Love,” and for all my prior reservations after ten minutes of “Casino Royale” I was absolutely head over heels smitten with him.

The movie itself is more of a slightly mixed bag. At 144 minutes, this second adaptation of Fleming’s first novel (the first starring Peter Sellers and Woody Allen and of which we will speak no more) is a good thirty minutes or so too long, stretches of it so languidly paced I started to think director Martin Campbell (who previously directed “Goldeneye”) might have fallen asleep in the editing room assembling his final cut. More, Bond showcases some third act stupidity that’s completely out of place, the agent missing clues so obvious it is a wonder he didn’t fall face-first over the top of them.

Yet none of this matters near as much as it probably should. “Casino Royale” features a driven Bond, a dangerous and seductive powder keg furiously driven by ego and an uncommonly focused desire to save the world (or at least England) by virtually any means necessary. This Bond calculates probability and consequence in a nanosecond; making life and death decisions so quickly he’s probably already fired his weapon and shot you dead in the time it takes for you to blink your eyes.

It helps immensely that writers Paul Haggis (“Crash,” “Flags of Our Fathers”) and Neal Purvis & Robert Wade (“Die Another Day”) have crafted a screenplay that is nearly as smart as it is exciting. In what is being touted as his first adventure, Bond is launched on an investigation taking him from the jungles of Africa to the beaches of the Bahamas to the moonlit freeways of Miami. It all culminates at the poker tables of a French casino, an international banker for terrorists named Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen, “Mrs. Henderson Presents”) coldly staring back at him with evil on his mind.

There is some phenomenally dynamic stuff going here, not the least of which is an early foot chase between Bond and a bombing suspect through a Madagascar construction site. This sequence is instantly classic. Stuntman Sébastien Foucan lyrically leaps all across the theater screen. One of the early pioneers behind Parkour, an absolutely insane extreme sport where anything and everything can be used as a launching pad for movement, the whole scene bristles with energy and excitement. This is easily the single most exhilarating action moment of the entire year, and without a doubt love-it or hate-it this is the one signature moment people will be talking about long after the movie ends.

Granted, just because longtime series producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have decided to reset the clock to zero with episode 21 doesn’t mean they’ve jettisoned many of the usual Bond tropes. There is the theme song (a blistering rock number performed by Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell), the idiosyncratic villain (Le Chiffre secretes blood from his tear ducts) and an Aston Martin (the brand new DB-S) with a bevy of gadgets including a handy dandy defibrillator which definitely comes in handy in a pinch.

And then there are the babes. There are two Bond women this time around (three if you count Ivana Milicevic, “Running Scared,” but her contact with 007 is minimal), and both make about as distinctive as an impression as is probably humanly possible in a series as rudimentarily familiar as this one is. Yet both Caterina Murino (“L’Amour aus Trousses”) and Eva Green (“Kingdom of Heaven”) defiantly stand out each in their own unique way, the latter elegantly blossoming as the film progresses to become the best counterpart to Bond since Diana Rigg broke the agent’s heart in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

All of this taken together (along with the returning style and grace of Judi Dench as M) is enough to make any self respecting James Bond fanatic to almost pee their pants in giggle covered glee. “Casino Royale” is a kick, a solid explosion of intrigue, action, suspense and romance signaling the rebirth of the franchise for a new millennium. It’s shaken (not stirred) entertainment that sent me out of the theater invigorated and energized, and if future Craig-powered pictures prove to be half as winning as this one Fleming’s superspy might live on for an additional 20 adventures. 

Film Rating: êêê1/2  (out of 4)