OK well its taken me quite a while but I finally managed to get around to seeing Skyfall at the pics, the latest James Bond film, which has garnered alot of critical acclaim from critics and audiences all round the world. So is it actually that good????? Well that's what this post is all about, but anyway on the with cursory stuff first, a bit of plot (don't worry I won't give it all away! Well ok quite a bit maybe! BASICALLY DON'T READ THE NEXT NEW FEW PARAGRAPHS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!).
The film begins in Istanbul, with James Bond (Daniel Craig) chasing a mercanary named Patrice (Ola Rapace, former husband of Noomi Rapace) who has a hard drive of files containing a list undercover agents placed in terrorist organisations by NATO states. In an ensuing fight, Patrice shoots Bond in the shoulder, and they fight on top of a train, with Bond's counterpart, Eve (Naomie Harris) backing him up from afar, using a rifle, she is ordered by Q (Judi Dench) to take the shot and eliminate Patrice, however she misses and shoots Bond instead, who falls into the water below. Months later and with Bond presumed dead, the ISC chariman Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) puts pressure on M to resign from her post, after the debacale of Bond's alleged death. As M makes her way back to the the MI6 offices, there is a large explosion that takes out the offices, as a result of which alot of employees are killed. M learns that the MI6 servers were hacked and she receievd a taunting message on her computer just seconds before the explosion occurred. Meanwhile, Bond is still alive and living abroad, using his presumed death as good reason to retire, he lives his life sleeping with women and drinking, when all of a sudden at a local bar he sees the headlines of the terrorist attack in London on TV. Bond returns to London and meets with M, who says if he is to be re-instated he must undergo a series of tests to be fit to return to the field. Bond takes the tests and does well in none of them, but regardless M informs him that he has passed.
Bond with the help of using shrapnel from his bullet wound, manages to track Patrice, and follows him to Shanghai, where he plans to assassinate someone. Bond arrives a little too late to prevent the assassination, but then engages Patrice in a fistfight, with Patrice falling over the edge of a high rise building, he falls to his death. Bond then finds a gambling chip from Patrice's equipment, which he uses to trace to a casino in Macau. There Bond meets with a woman, Severine (Bereince Lim Marohle) who was an accomplice in the assassination, and he asks to meet with her employer, however she warns him that he will be killed by men at the casino, but she will help him if he kills her employer. Bond survives the attack at the casino and then later meets Severine on a boat where they soon get down to it (well it is a Bond film!). Bond and Severine arrive on abandoned island off the coast of Macau, where they are captured and Bond soon meets Severine's employer, Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Silva is soon revealed to be a former MI6 agent, who worked under M, but has now turned to cyberterrorism, he taunts Bond into playing a shooting game where Severine is tied up and Silva places a drink on the top of her head, which Bond must shoot off. Bond (being a shaky shot due to his time away from the field) misses and shoots above her, but Silva shoots her dead instead. Bond then quickly fights off Silva's men and before we know MI6 agents arrive to capture Silva (as Bond was given a secret radio chip by Q, which broadcasted his whereabouts to MI6).
Bond returns to London with Silva captured, he is placed in a glass enclosure at the new underground headquarters of MI6. Silva reveals that he once worked for M and she handed him over to the Chinese intelligence, after he hacked his way into their networks. M meanwhile is being called to an inquiry over the mishandling of the events with the stolen hard drive at the start of the film. Silva however soon manages to escape custody at MI6, as he has hacked their systems, allowing his men to get him, he escapes into the subway system, with Bond in pursuit. Silva then proceeds to make his way to the inquiry so he can confront and kill M, in revenge for her actions, but Bond manages to save her just in time. Bond and M then flee from London and travel to Scotland where he goes to his childhood family home, Skyfall, in order to prepare for Silva coming, where they will face him for the last time.
(PLOT STUFF OVER!)
Skyfall is a highly entertaining addition to the Bond series, and with it we can see Daniel Craig's Bond develop even further towards become the suave Bond that we will eventually all recognise. But at this stage, he is still in transition, after his presumed death, Bond does appear to go back to being a drunken self loathing dropout. But its only when he learns of the attacks in London that it forces him to come out of hiding and back into the scene, out of concern for M. And its clear that M is a maternal figure for Bond in the film, as he was an orphan he had no parents to look up to when he grew up. She also protects him from the truth when it came to the tests he underwent in order to get him back into the field, as he failed, but she said he passed by the skin of his teeth. But in the end we all know when it comes to taking down the bad guys, Bond is the right man for the job. However thankfully Bond is no longer quite the cold blooded ruthless killer from the last two films, here we are starting to see him transition slowly into a slightly more humane figure than in Royale and Solace. And its partly that change that helps Skyfall work very well, as Bond needs to eventually evolve and adapt into the character we all know, rather than stay a gritty killing machine like he did previously.
Performance wise its all pretty good here, with Daniel Craig now having easily grown into the role of Bond, he provides a bit more warmth to Bond than before, as we get a bit more of his dry wit and humour. I especially like the scene where he undergoes one of the tests, which is free association with a pscyhologist, who asks him to say the first word that comes into his head when he says a word to him, such as "day..... wasted", and "M..... bitch". Also the scene where he quietly talks with M at the gallery who gives him a new signature enabled Walther PPK, and a small radio chip, he puts them away and says "a gun and a radio, its not exactly Christmas is it?". And by the end of the film we can see he has made the final transition into become the suave, well groomed, and (sort of) sophisticated fella that Bond is. Javier Bardem, who is no stranger to playing villains, plays a chilling one in Raoul Silva, as he comes across as being camp as a row of pink tents at first (practically coming onto Bond in their first scene, where he opens Bond's shirt looks at his wounds) but behind that is a chiling sociopath, with an appetite for mass destruction (and he probably owns a few weapons of them too!) and scary line in cyberterrorism.
Judi Dench makes her final appearance as M in the film and she is as fine as ever in the role, but I think at some point they were right to make the transition to a new M, and she makes a good exit in the part, which ends on a tragic note. Ralph Fiennes is also good as Mallory (who later turns out to be the new M!) playing the part of the pompous beaurocrat to perfection, although it does appear to be something of a cliche in these films, that they are all so posh and toffy nosed. And Naomie Harris is also very good as the famous Eva Moneypenny, and her flirting with Bond provides some of the film's fun moments, and they keep it in tradition as she just about the only girl that Bond never did! ;-) And finally Albert Finney makes an entertaining turn as Kincaid, the gamekeeper of the Skyfall estate, where Bond and M make their last stand against Silva. Finney get's one of the film's best lines, when shoots at some of Silva's men when they attack the house, and he shouts "welcome to Scotland!".
Directionally Sam Mendes does a great job here, as he was easily the best choice of Bond director in quite a while, and he keeps the action zipping along nicely, although perhaps the film could have done with a slight trim, time wise but overall it works well at just under 2 hours and 25 minutes. And its refreshing to see that they have recruited Thomas Newman to do the music score for Skyfall, as after so many years of Dave Arnold at the helm, its about time they changed him, and Newman's score is excellent and well suited to the film.
Flaw wise the film doesn't have too many, although it has to be said while its a very enjoyable film, its not what I'd call a masterpiece, as every Bond film that comes out always gets branded as the best one ever, and this is a pretty good film, but its not what I'd call a classic. And one thing that did bug me a little was clearly the plot line for when they captured Silva, was pinched from the Dark Knight, when the Joker allows himself to be captured and taken to prison. At that point its quite predictable that we know he wants to be captured, so he can be taken to M and he can confront her, but the style in which it was done was fairly similar to the Dark Knight, and you can see it coming when it happens.
So that's it for my Skyfall review, its a very enjoyable Bond film, probably not the greatest of all time, but it sees the series continue on the right track, and we are starting to move towards the James Bond we all recognise.
And that's it for now.
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