"The name's Bond. James Bond."

Yesterday night my roomie and I reached home around 9pm; I was in bit early and was watching Shiva on TV. He came and asked shall we go for a movie. Two movies were pending - Casino Royale and Dhoom-2, but I was not thinking as he was ill and just came in after a drive. I am always ready to go out, and since he brought up the topic, so get-set-go.

The nearest theater, Ega, was showing Dhoom-2. We decided to go for it. We knew getting tickets will not be a problem as you can definitely get tickets in 'not-to-be-mentioned-ways'. Just when we starting my roomie's friend called in and said that today's rate in Ega is Rs. 200/- (extremely costly!), but it would have been a bigger tragedy if we would have dropped our plan then. His friend was at Woodlands, another theater, trying to get tickets for Casino Royale. We told him to get two more for us. Luckily he got the tickets and we saved lot of bucks (Rs.140/- per head).

I had got quite a varied feedback for Casino Royale from friends and newspaper reviews. Some of them liked it very much but there was an equal lot who didn't like it at all. Few of the comments which I got were like Bond is not having any gadgets, Bond gets fooled many times, etc. Nevertheless I went with a clean slate.

And my verdict is its one of the excellent Bond movies I have seen. Daniel Craig did a awesome jobs, he fits the role well. The plot is based on the Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel by the same name. James Bond is introduced in this novel and is shown as an agent learning the tricks of the trade. He has promoted to 007 status, but still has to learn many things which goes with that status. He makes few mistakes, gets deceived quite a number of times and even is almost killed once. But as the saying goes, it the end which matters; Bond has the last word - "The name's Bond. James Bond."

My best sequence in the movie will the one in which Bond races in his Aston Martin DBS to save Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in the moonlit night in Montenegro. Vesper is tied in the middle of the road. Aston's head-lights fall on her when the car is just inches away from smashing her head and Bond diverts the speeding Aston Martin at the last moment.

If you are a James Bond fan, then missing Casino Royale would be a crime! For me, the wait starts for the next one :)