Friday, February 26, 2016

Skyfall (2012)

Skyfall is perhaps my least favourite James Bond movie, and I am well aware that I belong to a very small minority with this opinion. Skyfall is the best selling Bond film of all time - although after adjustment for inflation, the honour goes to Thunderball (1965)... Here we see Moneypenny and Q brought back to the canon again, and this is the only time that Bond actually fails his main mission.

The opening of the movie and the chase on the train are quite entertaining. I liked the part where Craig adjusted his cuff links after he bulldozed into the train - this reminded me of Brosnan in GoldenEye (1995) after he went through a wall in the tank, he made sure his tie knot was in place; he did it again in The World is Not Enough (1999)...

Coming back to Skyfall: Adele's theme song is an emotional ballad, well deserving of the Oscar and other accolades that she won. After the title sequence, we see Craig's depressed Bond drinking and taming scorpions, and basically, acting like a runaway child after a fight with mommy M. But finally an attack at the home base brings Bond back to London. After "reporting back for duty", he tries to get back in shape. Interestingly he has forgotten how to shoot with a gun! This makes me question whether he was in a coma all this time... Frankly, that is the only legitimate explanation for the scorpion-taming and all that childish behaviour in the beginning.

Another noteworthy point is the new Quartermaster. Ben Whishaw is a good choice as the new Q. Of course no one could replace the legendary Desmond Llewelyn, but Whishaw is different enough not to draw comparisons... In the story, some Batman-level detective work by Q, sends Bond to Shanghai, where Sam Mendes (the director) gets to shoot an artsy fight scene by just filming Bond and Patrice's silhouettes...

The highlight of the movie comes in the shape of a blonde Javier Bardem. Bardem as Raul Silva is perhaps the best Bond villain since Alec Trevelyan (agent 006 in GoldenEye). He is engaging, menacing, ambiguous, and strong. His plan of hiding and running with the intention of getting captured, and then derailing the subway train at that very specific point, make absolutely no sense.

And finally we get to the lowest point in the franchise history: James Bond becomes an adult version of Kevin McCallister from Home Alone (1990) and sets traps for the bad guys... After a little hide and seek and then ruining the beautiful DB5, we get to the climax of the movie, where Silva gets to fulfill his ultimate plan: Silva kills M while James Bond watches...

As I've said earlier in my review of Spectre (2015), I don't consider this to be a Bond film. After Bourne, the Bond franchise faced an identity crisis and gave up on its rich legacy. They corrected course to some extent with Spectre though...

To conclude, Skyfall is an expensive film, hybrid of Bourne and Home Alone, with some artsy shots by Sam Mendes. Is it a Bond film? - NO... Is it a good film? - NO... My score: 4/10.


P.S. Yeah, Eve was Moneypenny! Woohoo (said no one).

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