Movie Review: Skyfall
Everyone’s saying that Skyfall is one of the best Bond movies, if not the best, and I’m not sure I agree. I really liked it, but it was a bit slow and the plot could have been a lot better.
Daniel Craig, in his third Bond film, shows that he makes a great James Bond. He has the screen presence, humor, and acting chops, and he’s the most believable since Sean Connery (still my favorite). There’s a great supporting cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Judi Dench, Albert Finney, Naomie Harris, and others.
The movie is good despite it’s plot, which involves on old MI:6 spy named Silva, played be Javier Bardem, in a plot to kill M. The idea of an ex MI:6 spy, supposably superior to Bond in his day, going head-to-head with 007 seems like an awesome plot for a Bond movie, and casting Bardem in the role also seemed great. Except that Silva has no interest in Bond whatsoever. He has several opportunities to kill Bond and passes, not because of villainous arrogance like we’ve seen in other Bond movies, but because he simply doesn’t care. Bond is like a guard dog kicking at Silva’s hills most of the movie. There is not face-off between the two, no great fight scene, etc… And rather than play the character as a scary, menicing villian of Bond’s equal, Bardem plays him as a crazy, flamboyant psychopath, doing his best to summon the ghost of Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight. I would have rather seen him play the role straighter.
Albert Finney shows up towards the end and doesn’t seem to know or care about what’s going on. He just grabs his shotgun is is ready to go. The movie really seems to lose it’s direction for a while before ending on a high-note.
One more complaint – there’s no mention of Quantum, the secret evil organization that was introduced in the last two movies. Here’s hoping that they come back to that in the next film, as it was very promising.
Long-time Bond fans like myself will be very happy with the way the movie’s wrapped up, setting up brilliantly for future films, and there’s some other fun throw-backs in there as well. Q, the man behind all the great Bond-gadgets, is back in the fold, which is very welcome. There were some really great action sequences throughout, great dialogue and acting, so overall I really enjoyed this movie. I just wish the story was as good as the sum of its parts.