{"id":1433,"date":"2012-11-04T17:10:43","date_gmt":"2012-11-04T17:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/?p=1433"},"modified":"2026-10-30T18:12:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T18:12:36","slug":"skyfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/entertainment\/film\/skyfall\/","title":{"rendered":"Skyfall"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The opening scene of Skyfall is breathtaking; crisp, dangerous, fast,\u00a0furious,\u00a0and all edgy-BONDness. \u00a0Craig, in his third outing as the world’s coolest spy, seems to have found his balance in making the role his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skyfall<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bond\u00a0and MI-6 agent Eve are in Istanbul in hot pursuit of an unknown enemy. A\u00a0fabulous\u00a0and 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

However, the action never <\/span>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\u2014after accumulating wealth and cyber power to do just about anything he wants \u2014 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. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the while, “M” is holding off a political witch hunt that wants to put her into forced retirement, right in the midst of<\/span><\/span> a\u00a0chaos\u00a0about to explode. \u00a0But the way in which our <\/span><\/span>evil genius (Javier Bardem) plots to kill “M” is a bit pedestrian. \u00a0And 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. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there is the rub: the acting was spot-on, the directing stellar at times, <\/span>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. \u00a0It wasn’t. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t be down, though, as it’s still a fun and enjoyable film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The opening scene of Skyfall is breathtaking; crisp, dangerous, fast,\u00a0furious,\u00a0and all edgy-BONDness. \u00a0Craig, in his third outing as the world’s coolest spy, seems to have found his balance in making the role his own. Skyfall Bond\u00a0and MI-6 agent Eve are in Istanbul in hot pursuit of an unknown enemy. A\u00a0fabulous\u00a0and innovative chase scene ensues. The\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ba_format":"Film review","ba_short_answer":"","ba_case_file":"","ba_archive_note":"","ba_updated":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[266,267,265,269,268],"class_list":["post-1433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-266","tag-daniel-craig","tag-james-bond","tag-javier-bardem","tag-judi-dench"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1433"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2258,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions\/2258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}