When Daniel Craig started playing James Bond in 2006's "Casino Royale", he stunned the naysayers calling him "James Blond" by spearheading one of the better received Bond movies ever. His Bond was less of a charmer and more of a bulldog and in this "Bourne Identity"-loving world, it seemed like the perfect next step for the evolution of Bond to take. Then came "Quantum Of Solace", a movie with such fast, sloppy cinematography, I turned it off halfway through. Suddenly, the future of James Bond was in doubt and the good will built up from six years was in danger of running out. But as it turns out, "Skyfall" is getting some of the best notices of a James Bond film ever, shattering box office records, and even being talked about for Academy Award nominations. And although I wouldn't go that far, I would say that out of the seven or so Bond films I've seen, this is certainly the best and the one that comes closest to actually playing out like a movie/story than just a collection of spy vignettes.
We start in media res with Bond in Istanbul tracking down the theft of a list of the identities of MI6's undercover agents. After some awesome action sequences, Bond is accidentally shot by fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris) when M (Judi Dench) orders her to take a shot at the bad guy despite Bond being possibly in the way. Bond falls to his death over a waterfall and life moves on in England with that presumption. But this is only twenty minutes into a one hundred forty-three minute film so he's actually just hiding out somewhere in the Pacific, having sex, drinking, and relishing in "retirement" before he rushes back to England after seeing MI6 blown up on the news. After some action in China, Bond tracks down Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a former British agent who is gunning for M, after she left him captured by the Chinese many years ago. Thus, the second half of the film becomes more of a one on one battle between Bond and Silva, with M in the middle, finally coming to an end at Bond's childhood estate, "Skyfall".
My biggest problems with the last two Bond films were the unclear action sequences and lack of a cohesive plot both of which are solved with "Skyfall". First off, the action sequences we do get (and we get a lot of the two hour-plus running time) are frickin' amazing. Starting with Bond using a caterpillar bulldozer to open up a train like a can opener, to Bond fighting some unnamed henchmen in a Komodo dragon pit, to Bond chasing Silva through the packed London Underground, to the final battle at "Skyfall" manor, there's just a ton of awesome set pieces here, still fast and kinetic, but much easier to follow. The MI6 undercover agent is list is nothing extraordinarily original, but it does provide the necessary emotional attachment for the audience to get involved in Bond's need to get it back before more agents die. Craig's Bond, while charismatic, doesn't have the same presence as Connery's or Brosnan's and is more of an unstoppable force that the wilder characters and plot points revolve around. "Skyfall" uses that to its advantage by having Bond almost killed and then come back much too soon for active field duty. We finally get a vulnerable Bond, one who just might not be able to survive everything that is thrown at him.
Bardem's Silva doesn't appear until over one hour into the film, but when he does, the film becomes something totally different and better immediately. Le Chiffre from "Casino Royale" was on the verge to being a classic Bond villain (what with his damaged eye and tears of blood), but Silva is Blofeld levels of awesome. Formerly a Bond-level British agent, Silva was left to rot by M in a Chinese prison, withstanding torture for thirteen months before trying to commit suicide using his hidden cyanide capsule. Unfortunately, the pill was defective and instead of a merciful death, Silva's jaw was destroyed, basically leaving him with a prosthetic mouth. We're introduced to him when Bond is tied up after following Silva's involuntary mistress to his secret island base and it's a wonderful, memorable introduction with Silva appearing at the far end of a large room, giving a long monologue as he walks closer and closer to Bond and the camera. There's some homosexual subtext in this scene, but it's unclear whether Silva is sexually attracted to Bond or if he's just playing with his mind. He's certainly obsessed with M and he stages almost every action sequence in the second half of the film just to get close enough to see the terror in her face as he kills her. Soon Bardem will be able to form a four-piece rock band of awesome villains now that Silva joins drummer Anton Chigurh on lead vocals.
This is the fiftieth anniversary of the Bond franchise and there are a ton of references to past Bond films, possibly too many if you ask me. We just went over the same sort of deal when "Casino Royale" came out and a new era of Bond began, so it is way too soon to be going back to the well of "Look how our new Bond is different from the old one" with Q (Ben Whishaw) disparaging the concept of an exploding pen to the final revelation of just who Eve is, I'm ready for the Bond franchise to stop looking towards the past, especially since the status quo at the end of "Skyfall" leaves me very excited for what's to come. What does work are the small revelations we get about Bond's past. There are no overt answers, but we are again reminded that Bond was an orphan and it is revealed he grew up at a large manor in Scotland overseen by ALBERT FINNEY (HELL YEAH). I don't need any more Bond legacy jokes, but it will be interesting to see if the next few movies touch upon Bond's past. With every other villain being a former MI6 agent lately, having a long-lost relative of Bond's or some other old friend as the next bad guy would work very well.
Rating - 4.25 out of 5 stars
Random Thoughts -
The Bond series reminds me of "Doctor Who" in the sense that both franchises are British and fell into disrepair in the late 80's/early 90's before become huge successes again. Doctor Who does something Bond should do, which explain different actors playing the part over fifty years as the Doctor character dying and regenerating into another personality. I'm not the one who thought of this, but "James Bond 007" should just be the moniker given to different agents. It would be amazing if when Craig decides he's done with the franchise, he dies in the opening sequence of his last film. I mean really dies. And after the always spectacular credits we see M assigning the 007 James Bond codename to the next agent. Then in ten years you could have a special film with all the old Bonds reuniting to defeat some evil force. Connery and Moore would be super old and Dalton's getting up there too, but I think it'd work.
There's an all-star cast here, with Craig, Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, and ALBERT FINNEY. It's nice to see Bond becoming a popular franchise again like the Marvel films, where great actors sign up for a payday and the chance to be in an awesome spectacle of a film. Dench has played M since "Goldeneye", but this is the first time she's been such a large player in the story. I saw this as a detriment however, since I find her character uninteresting, possibly due to the way she's changed film to film without any sort of rhyme or reason. She's portrayed as an incredibly useless leader, always making mistakes and being on the wrong pulse of things. In the past two films she's horrified by Bond killing without authorization (despite him having a LICENSE TO KILL), but here she's incredibly callous towards the lives of Bond and his fellow agents. Hell, that's why Silva wants to kill her in the first place. I didn't buy any sort of mutual respect between Bond and this M, despite Dench playing the role fine every time.
ALBERT FINNEY again gets the "with Albert Finney" credit at the start of the film and shows up near the end much like he did in "The Bourne Ultimatum". I love FINNEY because in franchise films like these, he can just appear as a random never before mentioned character and every time it just works. It's like "Of course Albert Finney would be "so and so", because he's ALBERT FINNEY". I love ALBERT FINNEY.
"Skyfall" is very much reminiscent of the Nolan Batman films, in both positive and negative ways. Some of the plot points here (Bond believed dead, crazy villain who just wants to see the world burn, stoic hero) seem like direct copies of those films, but it's probably more an example of Hollywood doing everything "The Dark Knight way" right now, rather than director Sam Mendes purposefully cribbing from Nolan's work. Anyway it does work, and it's fine for the moment to have Bond be that sort of film series, although it certainly won't work for every franchise (psst. Superman psst.).
The final set piece here is basically James Bond does "Home Alone". Bond and M are hiding out at "Skyfall" with ALBERT FINNEY and have had Q leave clues for Silva to follow them there. The three of them spend the afternoon devising traps for the Silva's mooks to stumble into when attacking and it is AWSOME. It's literally what if Kevin McAllister had tried to brutalize Harry and Marv. It's also a wonderfully shot sequence with the dusk of Scotland slowly turning into complete darkness. It's very suspenseful and makes me want to pop in "Home Alone" for the first time in more than a decade, just in time for Christmas. I just wish someone had said "That was the sound of a tool chest falling down the stairs".
Next - Thursday the 15th, "Singin' In The Rain"
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