The opening scene of Skyfall is breathtaking; crisp, dangerous, fast, furious, and all edgy-BONDness. Craig, in his third outing as the world’s coolest spy, seems to have found his balance in making the role his own.
Skyfall
Bond and MI-6 agent Eve are in Istanbul in hot pursuit of an unknown enemy. A fabulous and innovative chase scene ensues. The action carries us for a while without getting stale, then segues into the creative, legendary opening credits the 007 franchise has maintained for fifty years. Adele’s Skyfall track sets the mood.
Javier Bardem is wonderful, straddling the line between legit menace and self-parodying super-villain. His opening scene is slow, seductive, and humorous as he takes his time introducing himself to Bond and the audience. Daniel Craig is cool as a cucumber, with moments of humor and playfulness.
However, the action never quite reaches the level of the opening scene again, and the script wanes. In the high-intrigue world of Bond, Skyfall comes down to a crazed ex-agent who—after accumulating wealth and cyber power to do just about anything he wants — cares about nothing other than spanking mama: killing M, his former boss, played steadily once again by Judi Dench, and convincing Bond to go on to join him in his rewriting of the world order.
All the while, “M” is holding off a political witch hunt that wants to put her into forced retirement, right in the midst of a chaos about to explode. But the way in which our evil genius (Javier Bardem) plots to kill “M” is a bit pedestrian. And the way in which Bond decides to trap him is even more ridiculous, and not in a good way; the script simply takes the easy way out too often, compounding the weak script problem.
And there is the rub: the acting was spot-on, the directing stellar at times, and very good at others, but it’s a simple revenge-film storyline; the film really missed the opportunity on its fiftieth birthday to be the best Bond film yet. It wasn’t.
Don’t be down, though, as it’s still a fun and enjoyable film.
