James Bond is promoted to 00 agent status, and his first assignment is to eliminate the traitorous MI6 section chief Dryden and his contact in Prague. In Uganda, Mr. White introduces Le Chiffre, a private banker to terrorists, to Steven Obanno, a commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Obanno entrusts Le Chiffre with $100 million to invest, and Le Chiffre, armed with knowledge of an upcoming terrorist attack on the aerospace manufacturer Skyfleet, shorts the company’s stock to try to turn a massive profit.
The mission expands to Madagascar, where Bond destroys an embassy, captures a bomb maker named Mollaka, and then kills him. M criticizes Bond for causing an international incident and for not taking Mollaka alive, and the investigation from Mollaka’s phone leads Bond to the Bahamas, where he discovers corrupt Greek official Alex Dimitrios had hired Mollaka to bomb Skyfleet at Le Chiffre’s request. Bond wins Dimitrios’s vintage Aston Martin in a high-stakes poker game, seduces Dimitrios’s wife, Solange, and pursues Dimitrios to Miami. Bond combats and defeats Dimitrios, then chases down the new bomber Dimitrios has hired at the airport and prevents the Skyfleet airliner from being destroyed. With Skyfleet’s stock intact, Le Chiffre loses Obanno’s money, and in a fit of rage over a leaked plot, Le Chiffre tortures Solange to death.
To recover his clients’ funds, Le Chiffre arranges a Texas hold ’em tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. MI6 enters Bond—the agency’s top poker player—into the tournament, hoping that a crushing loss will force Le Chiffre to seek asylum with the British government in exchange for information about his clients. Bond teams up with Vesper Lynd, a British Treasury agent overseeing the $10 million buy-in, and they meet their contact, French secret service agent René Mathis, in Montenegro. Obanno, furious at his loss, threatens Le Chiffre but allows him to continue playing to win back the money. Obanno and his bodyguard launch an attack on Bond, who kills them both. Bond’s stake drops when Le Chiffre is tipped off about his tell, but Vesper initially refuses to authorize additional funds; CIA agent Felix Leiter steps in to stake Bond the extra money in exchange for letting the CIA arrest Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre’s lover, Valenka, poisons Bond’s drink, yet Vesper saves him. Bond then returns to the game and wins the tournament.
Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper to trap Bond and takes them to an abandoned ship, where he tortures Bond to reveal the password to the bank account holding his winnings. Mr. White bursts in and kills Le Chiffre, but spares Bond and Vesper. Bond awakens in the hospital with Vesper at his side. He has René Mathis arrested, believing the French agent tipped off Le Chiffre. Bond falls in love with Vesper and resigns from MI6, and the couple sails to Venice. When M reveals that Bond’s winnings were never transferred to the British treasury, Bond realizes Vesper has betrayed him. He tracks her to an exchange of the money, where gunmen seize her inside a gutted Venetian palace that’s being restored and supported by large flotation devices. Bond destroys the flotation devices, causing the palace to lurch and sink into the Grand Canal, and he kills the shooters. Vesper is trapped in the antique elevator cage as it begins to submerge. Bond dives into the canal to rescue her, but she seals herself inside to prevent him from saving her, and Bond fails to resuscitate her as Mr. White escapes with the money.
M later informs Bond that Le Chiffre’s organization threatened to kill Vesper’s lover unless she became a double agent. Bond accuses Vesper of betrayal, but M notes that she may have negotiated for Bond’s life by trading the winnings. Realizing Vesper left her phone behind to aid him, Bond tracks the contacts and finds Mr. White at an estate in Lake Como. He shoots White in the leg to immobilize him and introduces himself: [The name’s Bond, James Bond].
