‘Casino Royale’ Turns 10, Part 3: In Praise Of The Love Story That Unfolds Between James Bond And Vesper Lynd

In celebration of the the tenth anniversary of the release of Casino Royale, we’re presenting a three-part series as to why it is the best film in the entire James Bond canon. In Part 1, Nick Rheinwald-Jones explained how the surprisingly restrained opening credit sequence of Casino Royale set the tone for the entire film. In Part 2, we made the case that the landmark parkour sequence is the film’s mic-drop moment. Today, in Part 3, we’ll talk about the love story that unfolds between James and Vesper that just so happens to be the emotional high point of the entire 007 franchise.

Before we go any further, there’s an elephant in the room that must be addressed. And its name is Texas Hold ‘Em.

In the Casino Royale novel, 007’s battle of wits with Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelson) occurs over a lengthy stint of baccarat, and that game quickly became a staple of the Bond films as well: Every actor except Timothy Dalton got his turn to play it. In fact, the most iconic scene in the entire franchise happens at the baccarat table.

Given all this history, then, the news that the Casino Royale movie would ditch baccarat in favor of a trendy American poker variant was not exactly well-received. It felt like an acknowledgment that the producers cared more about pandering to Spike TV viewers than upholding the best traditions of the franchise.

Well, guess what? Once again, I was dead wrong. Texas Hold ‘Em works spectacularly well in Casino Royale — and what’s more, now that I’ve seen it, I don’t think baccarat would have worked at all. As an actual game, it’s dramatically inert; it’s basically just French blackjack with fancier betting. Sure, it’s been used in lots of Bond films, but its purpose was always atmospheric; it was there to bolster 007’s coolness. For a game around which the main plot of the movie revolves, you need something with a little more depth, and even though Texas Hold’ Em is as American as Kid Rock in a bathtub full of Slim Jims, it’s got just the right amount of complexity and understandable strategy to hold an audience’s interest for lengthy stretches. It’s a perfect fit for Bond’s character, because the line between brilliant play and dick-swinging stupidity can be too thin to see. Recklessness often pays off, whereas caution can kill.

Plus, there’s this: In the end, Texas Hold ‘Em is all about bluffing. Which also makes it the perfect match for another character — a character with an unparalleled ability to deceive. Le Chiffre? Nope.

Ladies and gentlemen, Vesper Lynd.

There are a million superlatives I could bestow on her (and on Eva Green’s remarkable performance), but let’s get down to brass tacks here: Vesper is just a much better spy than James Bond. Everything Bond struggles with —staying incognito, controlling his emotions, reining in his ego— Vesper does without batting an eyelash. She saves Bond’s life at least twice but never relies on his protection even once. (The first time he tries to rescue her, he fails; the second time, she kills herself rather than let him.) She even has a better handle on men’s fashion than he does, although this part should come as no surprise to any straight guy smart enough to let his wife or girlfriend pick out his clothes. And she looks great holding an envelope.

Indeed, Vesper has so many layers that she’s only become more mysterious to me over the course of dozens of viewings. For example, is she genuinely traumatized in this scene?

Or did she cook it up to further lure him in? I genuinely have no idea, and I love that.

And yet, in spite (or because) of all the baggage and artifice, the genuine love story that unfolds between James and Vesper is absolutely the emotional high point of the entire 007 franchise. It’s a beautiful contrast to the previous four decades of weak and pliant “Bond girls,” even as it sets up Bond’s internal justification for becoming an even greater womanizer than he was at the beginning of the movie. Vesper doesn’t just break James’s heart; she breaks him, full stop, and the only way he can put himself back together is by honing all of his darkest, coldest instincts to a fine point. When 007 swaggers out at the film’s end, holding a machine gun and wearing the hell out of a suit, he epitomizes cool precisely because he’s left behind every bit of pesky humanity that was tugging at him. As far as sticking a landing goes, it’s hard to do much better than this.

So here’s where I explain why Casino Royale might have actually killed the franchise.

Everything about the movie’s ending (including, of course, the thundering arrival of the James Bond Theme) indicated that the series was ready to return to business as usual. As the credit roll finished with the familiar “James Bond Will Return,” we were primed to see Daniel Craig’s version of Bond step into a classic 007 adventure — an adventure that would have more emotional resonance now that we understood what made the character tick.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, the subsequent films’ directors decided that they just couldn’t resist going back to probe Bond’s psyche some more: First Quantum of Solace yanked open the wounds that Casino Royale‘s ending had so convincingly sutured, and then Skyfall and SPECTRE went even deeper into Bond’s past to expose a brand-new set of raw nerves. Collectively, the three films make up quite an effective treatise on how depressing and exhausting it is to be James Bond (forget the vodka martini; what 007 really needs in those films is a double espresso), and that’s certainly not where I was hoping things would go. Nonetheless, there’s no denying that Casino Royale pointed the series in that direction. It opened the door to the idea that angst could be an integral part of a Bond movie, and once that door was open, highfalutin auteurs like Sam Mendes and Marc Forster were happy to walk through it, suddenly seeing the franchise as an opportunity to flex their muscles on a big-budget canvas. Joy and escapism —the hallmarks of any good Bond movie, including Casino Royale— fell by the wayside.

Still, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, there is nothing wrong with James Bond that can’t be fixed with what is right with James Bond, and there is so, so, so much right with Casino Royale. Before 2006 I never believed I’d ever see a Bond film as good as that one, so regardless of how far off-track things feel at the moment, hope springs eternal that the franchise will be able to reinvent itself once again.

[Where to stream Casino Royale]

RELATED: ‘Casino Royale’ Turns 10, Is Still The Greatest Bond Film Ever: Part 1

RELATED: ‘Casino Royale’ Turns 10, Part 2: The Parkour Scene Is The Film’s Mic-Drop Moment

Nick Rheinwald-Jones is a contributing writer for Previously.TV and hosts the podcast Making the Sausage, a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of making television.