The 2006 Casino Royale film wasn't even about poker to my young eyes: it was about explosions, car chases, machine guns with bottomless magazines, tailored suits and product placement for cars that would only look at home parked ostentatiously on a driveway at a summer house. He had more literary credibility and maturity than a John McClane, but the romantic, suave, gentlemanly James Bond of old wasn't the image I had until much later. In my young mind James Bond was unreasonably handsome and effortlessly cool, but at his core was an action hero. Daniel Craig's James Bond was the first Bond I properly got to know.
