I wasn’t sure they could top Casino Royale, and I”m not sure they did, pre­cisely. What they did with the new Bond movie is con­tinue the story from Casino Royale with­out miss­ing a beat or drop­ping the inten­sity. I won’t give too much away, but I will say I was damn impressed by how smoothly this tran­si­tioned from the first film. As a fan of the orig­i­nal Ian Flem­ing nov­els, I’m also amazed at how they were able to recap­ture the sense of no-​nonsense (there is no Q, and very few gad­gets) bad-​assery in a post Cold War world. Make no mis­take, this Bond doesn’t quip, doesn’t waste time mug­ging for the cam­era. These are seri­ous professionals.

That said, some lessons learned.

• Do not build a build­ing out of hydro­gen fuel cells. You’re just ask­ing for trou­ble. Oh, the humanity.
• If some­one implies that they’re watch­ing you, for god’s sake, don’t get up and storm out of the opera.
• Never, for any rea­son, pull over at a Boli­vian traf­fic stop.
• Oh, and don’t give James Bond a rea­son to want you dead.