Time Magazine preview Casino Royale

The latest issue of Time Magazine features a preview of the upcoming season, and in particular, the forthcoming James Bond film Casino Royale. The online article sports a new picture of Daniel Craig as 007 propping up a cocktail bar.

They are the three most powerful numbers in show business, capable of transforming mortal men into movie gods. So when Daniel Craig was offered the role of 007 in Casino Royale, the 21st James Bond film, he was torn. Should he decline and keep building a steady career of small parts in big films (such as Angelina Jolie's lover-rival in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, a Mossad agent in Munich) and big parts in small films (Layer Cake's nice-guy coke dealer, Ted Hughes in Sylvia)? Or should he accept and become forever the man who was Bond? He turned to Pierce Brosnan, four-time veteran of Her Majesty's Secret Service, for advice. "Go for it," Brosnan told him. "It's a blast."

With blond hair, ice-blue eyes and the profile of a professional boxer, Craig, 38, although a Brit, isn't an obvious choice to play the superspy--which is the point. Based on Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale goes back to the beginning, when Bond was just as likely to tear up a bar as pull up to one for a shaken martini. Sent to bring down a terrorist group by beating its banker in a high-stakes poker game, Craig's Bond isn't Sean Connery charming or Roger Moore smooth. "He's rough around the edges, less refined than he becomes later in life," Craig says. Film audiences like their heroes conflicted. "He falls in love with a woman who's his equal, not just some dumb broad he beds."

Craig plays Bond pre-license to kill, giving him more freedom to make the spy his own. But fans can rest easy: "He's still Bond. I'm not screwing around with this iconographic figure." That means fast cars, shoot-outs and three new Bond girls. ("Hell on earth," Craig says, smiling.) Seems Brosnan was right: Bonds do have more fun.

Thanks to `JCRendle` for the alert.

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