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The greatest origin of drama in Casino Royale has nothing do with torture or espionage at all. Instead, it is the drama occurring inside Bond. Now, I won't go as far as to suggest this is a character study or anything, but there's more introspection into what makes Bond who he is than all the other Bond films combined. Craig's 007 is instinctual, observational and intelligent. But he's also brutish, aggressive, arrogant, and emotionally-detached.

Like 24's Jack Bauer, these traits in Bond aren't portrayed as either good or bad. In fact, like in many films and TV shows right now, Casino carries a sense that the world just isn't black-or-white anymore. There's a lot of gray area. Good guys have dark spots and we're never really sure who the real bad guys are. The movie capitalizes on this with the realistic tension that Bonds' arrogance and emotional detachment are both curses and attributes in his line of work. His arrogance costs him a lot—but it also propels him to success. His emotional detachment is necessary, Bond says, because if he couldn't just move on after killing, "I wouldn't be very good at my job." At the same time, this moral flexibility is slowly killing his soul and removing any piece of the real him that's still alive.

The inimitable Judi Dench is divine as M

This subplot of Bond's psyche develops through conversations with M, but mostly in a well-executed love story with MI6 treasury rep Vesper Lynd (Eva Green). Along to provide Bond with his gambling funds, Lynd quickly became my favorite Bond Girl of all time. Her effect on Bond is unrivaled as she continually reminds the spy he has a choice about who he is; just because he's sinned doesn't mean that's who he has to remain.

Lynd brings out the person in Bond. We begin to see who he is beyond the agent. He begins to open and to question. His armor lifts just a tad. But, nothing in this world is a sure thing. Nothing is black and white. And as the film ends, the internal wrestling is over. Bond's vulnerable spots are covered up. And he suddenly and assuredly becomes the Bond we all know. Really, he was this guy from the very first minute of the pre-credit sequence—but now, in the final scene, he embraces it.

Bond has begun.

1. Do you think there are jobs in the real world that require people to, as Vesper says, "switch off" morality? What are they? Would you be able to put aside morality for a job? What do you think that does to a person? Do you think bad deeds can be good if they are done for the overall good
2. There are two scenes back-to-back in the Casino Royale hotel that show a difference between how Le Chiffre and Bond both treat women in danger. What does this juxtaposition say about both men
3. At the end Bond says, "I thought he had my back. Lesson learned." And then Vesper at one point tells Bond, "You have your armor back on." What does Bond learn in this film about how he must live his life? Why does he need this "armor?" And what exactly is it
4. Who do you think is clearly "good" and "bad" in this film? How is this grayish world often seen in pop culture lately. Why do you think that is? Is the world more black-and-white than this?

Rated PG-13, the film perhaps should be treated as an R-rated film for intense sequences of violent action (lots of gun play, beatings and blood), an intense scene of torture involving a man's scrotum (the impact is not shown but heard), sexual content (typical Bond euphemisms and unmarried characters rolling around with clothes on or under covers) and nudity (while female characters are often in skimpy outfits leaving little to the imagination, the "nudity" refers to a male character sitting nude in a chair during a torture scene, but nothing is shown).

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