Some of what you considered to be negatives - lack of theme music, lack of big set-piece battle where the volcano lair/undersea base/space station gets attacked by ninjash/commandosh/schpashe marinesh - I considered to be positives. This was a good film in its own right, not merely a good Bond film. Usually, you have to make allowances for the genre (laser wristwatches, bikini-clad 19-year-old professors of nuclear physics, Roger Moore) but Casino Royale stands on its own.

Sure, you and I have seen Jackie Chan do this stuff before, but a lot of people won't have - and I for one don't object to the director taking the action in that direction. It's not a contest; if he can make it exciting - and I think he did - I'm not going to sit there unmoved just because I've seen a different film that did the same thing a bit better.

Same goes for the premise; no, a card game is not as inherently exciting as foiling a plot to cause World War III, but I found the poker sequences tense and enjoyable. Continually having to top the previous threat is a losing game in any case - once you've saved the entire world, where do you go from there?

Producing a Bond film that wasn't pre-emptively parodied to death by Austin Powers was really the only way they could go. I liked it, and I'm looking forward to what they do next.