Ever since I picked up my first Stephen King book back in middle school, I've reacted with a sense of trepidation when one of my favorite tomes is translated to the big (or small) screen. For every brilliant re-imagining like Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," there are 10 outright brutalizations like "Salem's Lot." Sometimes, the errors are corrected later on, or other versions that hew more closely to the books ("The Shining" in miniseries form, for example) are produced. But most often, the damage is done and never fixed.

Oh, and we're not going to talk about David Lynch's "Dune" here. I've long ago come to grips with the fact that I have a sick, twisted love for that movie ... especially the four-hour version. I love it, if only for the chance it gives me to mock Sean Young.

Action movies have had more than their share of godawful screen translations. Any fellow fan of the old "Destroyer" series will wince at the mention of the screen adaption starring Fred Ward as Remo Williams and, in one of the most bizarre cases of miscasting in cinematic history, Joel Grey as Chiun, the Korean Master of Sinanju.

This may brand me as something of a pariah, but I've always felt the same way about the Bond movies. I've enjoyed them, but they didn't grip me the way the original Ian Fleming Bond books did when I was a kid. Bond was far from the stereotypical hero in the books. He was a good man at heart, but not above doing cruel, brutal, heartless and savage things to achieve his noble ends. He would smile while he pulled a trigger, and if you were a bad guy on the receiving end of his wrath, there wasn't a hole deep enough to hide in.

Sean Connery hewed closest to "my" Bond, in early films like "Goldfinger." Roger Moore was always a bit too smirky, Timothy Dalton too geeky and Pierce Brosnan too clean, although I enjoyed Brosnan's talent. We won't discuss George Lazenby.

All the Bond movies are fun to watch, to be sure. Who doesn't love strapping in for two hours or so of explosions, car chases, gorgeous (and deadly) women and plots destined to destroy the world? If you're possessed of even a rudimentary ability to suspend disbelief, you can enjoy any Bond flick fully. Make sure to have popcorn.

So now we come to "Casino Royale," which purports to continue the recent trend of re-imagining movie franchises. "Batman Begins" set the bar pretty high for this in 2005, with a movie that pretended (wisely, by and large) that the original series of films never existed. Christian Bale made a fantastic Caped Crusader, and if Michael Caine wasn't born to play Alfred, I don't know who was.

I had to give Bale credit for guts. It's always tough to take on an iconic role. Every fan has his or her own pre-set mental image of what the character should look like. At least Bale had the Bat suit to fall back on. Daniel Craig, as the new Bond, has no such refuge. He even, much to the horror of Bond purists, was *gasp* blonde!

Once the announcement of Craig's casting was made, the press immediately launched into a crusade of vilification that went beyond the bounds of reason. Bond fan sites went into Full Rabid Fanboy mode, stopping just short of calling for Craig's public beheading and the dyeing of his detached head's hair.

I would now like to offer a gigantic platter of broiled crow to all those in the entertainment media who, based solely on hair color, decided before the first feet of film were shot that "Casino Royale" would be a debacle. Would you like fries with that?

"Casino Royale" is not only the best Bond ever, it is the truest imagining of Fleming's writing ever done. As M, played brilliantly again by Judi Dench, says, Bond is a blunt instrument. He's not an assassin, he's a brawler, not afraid to dive into the middle of the fray and even seeming to take a cruel joy in the sound of fist against skull.

At the same time, he's far from dense. In his own way, he's a brilliant man. His genius lies in the world of reading people, analyzing situations and acting with quick, lethal, merciless certainty. If Craig's Bond has decided you need to die, the fact of your demise is written in stone. By the same token, if he's decided you're worth saving, he will defend you to his last breath.

I won't give away too much of the plot, but this makes a betrayal Bond suffers at one point in the movie all the more wrenching.

Craig's Bond is smooth when it's time for that, playing a high-stakes game of poker. (That's one sign of the changing times, there. I guess no one knows what baccarat is anymore.) But he just as quickly shifts into full-on brawler mode when the opportunity presents itself, and you get the feeling he's actually a bit more at home in the latter frame.

In short, this new Bond is still a hero, but he's not a terribly nice guy.

"Casino Royale" won't win any Oscars. These sorts of movies never do. But it should win your battle of which movie to go see next weekend. It doesn't have any car chases to speak of, and the explosions are less-than-awe-inspiring, but you won't miss them.

Stop muttering to yourself and mutter at me, instead. Drop me a line, anytime!