Casino Royale (2006)

MI6 operative James Bond gains his license to kill and promotion to 00 agent status by assassinating two targets: traitorous section chief Dryden at the British Embassy in Prague and his contact, Fisher. In Uganda, the mysterious Mr. White introduces Steven Obanno, a high-ranking member of the Lord’s Resistance Army, to Le Chiffre, an Albanian private banker to terrorists. Obanno entrusts Le Chiffre with a large sum of money to invest; Le Chiffre subsequently shorts the stock of aerospace manufacturer Skyfleet, betting on the company’s failure given his insider knowledge of a terrorist attack.

In Madagascar, Bond pursues bomb-maker Mollaka to an embassy, killing him and blowing up the building. In London, MI6 chief M admonishes Bond for causing an international incident and ignoring her orders to capture Mollaka alive. Clues point to corrupt Greek official Alex Dimitrios, whom Bond finds in the Bahamas. After winning his Aston Martin DB5 in a poker game and seducing his wife Solange, Bond pursues Dimitrios to Miami and kills him. Bond then thwarts the destruction of Skyfleet’s prototype airliner, costing Le Chiffre his entire investment: $101.206 million in total. He surmises that “somebody talked” and since Dimitrios was already dead, his wife Solange is tortured to death for information on the alleged leak. To recoup his clients’ lost money, Le Chiffre organizes a high-stakes Texas hold ’em tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. MI6 enters Bond in the tournament, believing a defeat will force Le Chiffre to seek asylum with the British government in exchange for information on his clients.