Newly endowed with his licence to kill by an apprehensive M (Judi Dench), a rookie 007 (Daniel Craig) dives headfirst into an investigation of a global terrorist network. The trail leads to Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), mathematics genius and "banker to the world's terrorists," who is desperately seeking to recover $100 million of his clients' money by setting up a high-stakes poker game at Montenegro's Casino Royale. Entered into the game to beat Le Chiffre and thus force him to turn to MI6 for protection, Bond must not only navigate a series of assassination attempts but the no less treacherous terrain of his long dormant emotions, as his feelings for frostily beautiful Treasury agent Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) force him to question the ethics of his deadly profession. Forcefully directed by GoldenEye's Martin Campbell, with much emphasis on brutally Bourne-style hand-to-hand combat — the opening, parkour-inspired chase across a construction site is simply spectacular — Casino Royale rivals From Russia With Love and On Her Majesty's Secret Service as the best film of the Bond series. Buff, blond, pug-nosed and liver-lipped, Craig is dynamic as an assertively atypical 007, and his testy-to-tender relationship with Green's Lynd makes this perhaps the only truly romantic film in the series since OHMSS.