We'll start by looking at the story. In the novel, James Bond is sent to the town of Royale-les-Eaux in Northern France to take part in a high-stakes Baccarat tournament. His mission is to bankrupt and discredit Le Chiffre, the treasurer for a Soviet-backed trade union in Alsace. Bond's key allies are: Vesper Lynd, the personal assistant to MI6 station chief in the Soviet Union; Rene Mathis, an agent for the French Secret Service; and Felix Leiter, from the CIA.
The film adaptation remains faithful to the original story, but tries to expand on it. This would have been necessary, as the novel was written in 1953 while the film came out in 2006. Many changes would have been made to reflect more contemporary issues. A few minor changes include Vesper working for the Treasury, and the game being Texas Hold-'em rather than Baccarat.
The major change and expansion involves Le Chiffre. In the film, Le Chiffre is a private banker who finances terrorist organisations, investing his clients' money in stock options for an aerospace company while arranging for a terrorist attack on their new airliner's maiden voyage. Now, stock markets are not really my area of expertise. From what I've gathered, he's banking on the attack's event affecting the value of the shares, essentially betting on the company's failure. The first half of the film involves Bond discovering and foiling the attack, which costs Le Chiffre his investment and necessitates the tournament. MI6 believes that if he loses the tournament, he'll be desperate for protection from his creditors.
Compared to the book, the baccarat tournament is being held at the beginning of the story. It's established that Le Chiffre had invested his union's money in a chain of brothels, only for them to be closed down following the passage of new laws against prostitution. Bond's goal to bankrupt him is part of an alternative to assassination; if MI6 assassinated Le Chiffre, he would be made a martyr. They want to get around this by leaving him to be assassinated by SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence service.
I do quite like the more subtle action of the book. Bond is about to be killed by one of Le Chiffre's bodyguards as he's about to buy back in using money given to him by Leiter. It's a very tense scene which ends with Bond feigning heat exhaustion and falling off his chair to both disarm his assailant and ruin the scheme by drawing attention to himself. As this was the first book in the series, that kind of thing can be done. In the films, it's more cinematic, but there had been twenty action-packed films which came before that one.
All in all, the film version of Casino Royale retains the story of the original book, while simultaneously expanding and updating it for a more modern setting.
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