There's a new Bond for a new age - and he and the film deliver the goods in a realistic high style, writes Michael Dwyer

THE emergence of a scantily dressed actor from the sea has been an iconic image of the James Bond series from the first film, Dr No (1962), when Ursula Andress appeared dripping wet in a white bikini, to the most recent, Die Another Day (2002), where Halle Berry paid underdressed homage to Andress.

In Casino Royale it's Bond himself (played by Daniel Craig) whose stocky physique is admired by the camera as he strides from the sea. Later, in another inversion of the sexism that's been a staple of the series, a woman comments on Bond's "perfectly formed arse".

What's the world coming to? The franchise has undergone a radical overhaul since the success of the Jason Bourne series starring Matt Damon demonstrated that the world wasw ready for a darker, harder Bond whose exploits are rooted in realism.

Breaking with the longstanding Bond tradition of opening on a high-octane action sequence, Casino Royale begins with a black-and-white prologue, set in Prague, to remind us of the harsh reality whereby MI6 agents earn their 00-status, by notching up two kills. As Bond prepares for his second execution in the line of duty, flashbacks detail the first - a messy, brutal mix of beating, strangulation and drowning.

Cue the opening credits, which eschew the standard slinky silhouettes as grunge pioneer Chris Cornell punches out the theme song, You Know My Name, which, for a change, is not moulded from an awkward Bond movie title such as The World Is Not Enough.

Wacky inventor Q, played for laughs by John Cleese, has been thrown out with the same bathwater, along with his eccentric gadgetry and Bond's double entendres. This is Bond before he exhibited a flair for dry humour and cared about the preparation of his dry martinis. Then again, he's just starting out all over again here.

The result is so revisionist that it might have been called Bond Begins had Christopher Nolan not used a similar title when he explored Batman's roots last year. It is appropriate that Casino Royale takes its title from Ian Fleming's 1953 novel, which first introduced Bond, as the film gets back to its basics and re-introduces him to cinema audiences.

Taking the book as their template, the movie artfully reinvigorates the series in a contemporary context where the technology is hi-tech but used to disseminate information; it appears that mobile phone and internet access is more sophisticated in eastern Europe than anywhere else in the world. The combat, however, is grounded in sheer physical dexterity, crucially in the purity of the action sequences that remain the mainstay of the series.

A thrilling, extended chase sequence in Madagascar - up, down and across precariously high, narrow surfaces, and shot with vertigo-inducing camerawork - employs parkour, the elemental free running popularised in the energetic French thriller District 13 and destined to become such a staple of screen entertainment that it's only a matter of time before they try it out on Fair City.

A timely plotline involving a terrorist threat at Miami airport is orchestrated with imagination and tension that's heightened in Stuart Baird's expert editing. And there is a torture scene that is utterly primitive, gruelling to watch and essential to the plot.

The director is New Zealand-born action maestro Martin Campbell, who toiled in tacky 1970s British sex comedies before making his mark in movies, where he first refreshed the 007 franchise with GoldenEye (1995), Pierce Brosnan's debut as Bond. Campbell's judgement errs only in the protracted final stages of Casino Royale, as the visceral movie falters through multiple endings.

There have been no missteps with the casting. Mads Mikkelsen, a versatile Danish actor best known on the arthouse circuit from the uncompromising Pusher trilogy, brings creepily sinister determination to the role of the principal villain, Le Chiffre. He is not a conventional megalomaniac nemesis for Bond, but an asthmatic Albanian and former chess prodigy, now a private banker to a network of international terrorists.

The sublime Judi Dench, effortlessly exuding gravitas, is more prominent than ever before as M (we even see her in bed with Mr M). The ace card, however, in a movie that pivots on a high-stakes poker game, is Daniel Craig, whose screen breakthrough in the landmark TV drama Our Friends in the North coincided with Brosnan's debut as 007.

Craig's 007 is flawed, volatile, over-confident, sardonic, and tough as nails. He has reinvented the role with a passion and presence that affirms his gifted range. All those who doubted Craig's casting and dubbed him James Blond - and I was one of many who demurred - may now eat their words. Bon appetit.