Skyfall review

I could go through and narrate every single element of the plot, or I could just say "it's GoldenEye with some parts done slightly better and some parts done slightly worse, with elements from The World is Not Enough and On Her Majesty's Secret Service chucked in. It has some good moments and the last 45 minutes are probably the best thing the series has done in more than twenty years, but on the whole nothing felt developed enough for the Serious Bond Film it obviously tried so hard to be."

Okay that's my review! Leave a comment below and tell me which Bond film you wanna see next.

Oh fine. Full recap with snark below the jump.

So the films starts with a blurry, out-of-focus guy walking towards the screen until you see Daniel Craig. If I were that sort of reviewer, most of the rest of this recap would be love-letters to the cinametography, but I'm not that kind of reviewer. So instead I'm just going to pepper this post with screengrabs because dayamn the cinematography is freaking awesome.

Okay so there's an operation that's somehow gone horribly wrong and an agent named Ronson is bleeding out. But M doesn't want Bond to be too preoccupied (i.e, do anything to stop the bleeding) because Bond has to recover "the hard drive."  Anyway Bond gets in a car with an Awesome Black Chick (I don't think we learn her name until the very end of the film, so I'm just going to call her ABC for the entire film). There's a car chase through some city that looks like it should be in Asia, but it's daytime both there and in London where M is, so mayhaps not. Bond gets on a motorcycle and ABC nearly runs down an entire crowd. M tells them they can't afford to lose "that list." It's a NOC list. It's the same f*cking MacGuffin from f*cking Mission Impossible. F*ck. You.

Anyway Bond and The Bad Guy chase each other around on motorcycles until ABC cuts them off at a bridge, somehow. The Bad Guy jumps off the bridge onto a train. Bond follows but he does a less awesome job of it, and if The Bad Guy were competent, he would have stomped on Bond's fingers and ended the film right there. Hey you remember Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, where at the beginning Indy tried to swing onto a truck and missed? Yeah, this felt a little bit like that.

 As usual, Bond has a semiautomatic pistol and is thus hopelessly outgunned, but manages not to be killed because he's Boring Invincible Comic-Book Superagent 007. There's a crane on the train, and Bond tries to use it to whack the bad guy off. Unfortunately, he turns the crane around so that the operator's cage is directly exposed to gunfire and takes a bullet in the shoulder. Seriously, Jimmy, if you'd turned it around counterclockwise, the crane itself would have been between the shooter and the cage. ABC gets the first Bond One-Liner of the film, because she is Awesome. Bond manages to jump onto another car like he doesn't have a debilitating shoulder injury, and then manages to have a protracted fight atop a moving train like he doesn't have a debilitating shoulder injury. Which is funny, because the rest of the film is going to be playing up his debilitating shoulder injury. So not at all like The World is Not Enough, where Bond's debilitating shoulder injury isn't a plot point unless it is. Got it.

Anyway ABC gets ahead of them again (I thought the point of trains was that they could move hella fast) and sets up a sniper rifle. But Bond and The Bad Guy are tussling with each other and he doesn't bother trying to break away despite the fact that he has an earpiece which should (and judging by the editing, apparently does) inform him that there's a sniper rifle trained on him. Anyway, ABC misses and hits Bond and he falls fifty feet into a river. And then over a waterfall.

James Bond is dead. Roll credits.

Ha ha just kidding. Despite the fact that the rest of the film will try to convince you that this is Vulnerable Human James Bond, the man who just got shot was Boring Invincible Comic-Book Superagent 007.

Anyway now we have Boring Oscar-Winning But Still Bland Pop Song by Boring Oscar-Winning But Still Bland Pop Artist while repetitive visuals and nowhere near enough naked women make up our opening credits. We see a castle that apparently belongs to House Baratheon (honestly, if you were trying to convince me that this was Bond's ancestral home, we'd see a coat of arms with the words "Orbis Non Sufficit." I mean, it's very obvious that the guys in charge of the Craig films have seen OHMSS, so why pretend otherwise? Also we learn that this film was edited by Stuart Baird, who if memory serves is the turd who directed Star Trek Nemesis, so... that's not in any way encouraging. Turns out he's a hella better editor than a director, but that's not a very high bar.

Okay back to the movie. They're still trying to convince us Bond is dead, which means the plot isn't going anywhere. Hey remember You Only Live Twice? We saw Bond's funeral service and then we saw divers recover the body and we immediately knew something was up and saw Bond in the very next scene. Nope, not here though. Here M is summoned to Lord Voldemort's office, and he tells her that she's voluntarily retiring in two months. I like Ralph Fiennes. Frankly, despite the fact that he does very little, he's one of the points in this film's favor. Judi Dench is good as M too. This scene is easily my favorite scene in the first half of the film. M's a determinator; she'll do whatever the hell it takes to get the job done.

On the ride back, M's computer gets hacked and MI6 headquarters gets bombed. And surprise surprise, Bond is alive!  Banging chicks, taking pills, getting hammered. Considering all the "getting too old for this shit" shtick the film tries to pull later, it's amazing Bond doesn't get a nasty hangover here or something.  Anyway Wolf Blitzer has a cameo and tells Bond that MI6 was bombed, so Bond gets back in the game. (Where the hell is Bond that he's getting CNN on a plasma-screen TV?)

So Bond shows up at M's house, demonstrating that England's spymistress's security sucks. This is an important point, because we're later going to establish that Silva, the Big Bad, is (supposed to be) Evil Bond. So if Bond can do this, why can't Silva just walk in and pop M in the head? Anyway I have to hand it to the makeup people. Bond's apparent age varies by about ten years from scene to scene. I assume it's deliberate, so he can look like a tired old man in scenes like this and a believable action hero in the scenes where he has to be Not Boring Invincible Comic-Book Superagent 007 Honest. One more thing about this scene: M says they sold all Bond's stuff after they thought he died. Remember that an hour and a half from now.

MI6 relocates to what is supposed to be part of Churchill's bunker. I do not remember any part of Churchill's bunker being that spacious. So then we have the Get Back in Shape Montage, which is nicely undercut by the way Bond collapses as soon as he's alone. All of this would be interesting if we thought there was even the slightest chance that Bond might actually go (Spoilers A Storm of Swords) on us and have to rely more on his wits than his strength. Which actually would tie in with the whole hacker/shadows thing going on with Silva. I would give that movie an A in a heartbeat. But no. Bond will make every shot that counts for the rest of the film with one minor exception. Skyfall gets mentioned during a psych exam, but balls if they're going to explain what it is.

ABC shows up again and they flirt. Bond's awfully forgiving. Ah, it was Istanbul where they were at the beginning.

Bond and Voldemort have a scene together. Voldemort says M is sentimental about Bond. Yup, that's why she was okay with the risk of having him killed at the beginning. And why she's okay with sending him back in the field even though he failed all of the readiness tests. (Again, this would mean so much more if he wasn't his usual one-man army self for the rest of the film.)

Bond meets Q, who acts like Matt Smith and harps on about the film's "we're getting too old for this shit" theme. Q is now younger than Bond for the first time in... ever. By the way, his actor previously appeared with Craig in a film called Layer Cake, which I've been meaning to see. Anyway Bond gets a gun and a radio. The gun will only fire if Bond is holding it. So basically Bond's got devices from License to Kill and Goldfinger. Q asks him if he was expecting an exploding pen, which is funny because there was an exploding pen in GoldenEye, which was all about a rogue MI6 agent and computer hacking.

Also in GoldenEye, Bond once wore a sweater. Bond should never wear sweaters, but he wears one briefly in Shanghai here. He's in Shanghai to track down and kill The Bad Guy From The Beginning. But he lets The Bad Guy From The Beginning finish one more assassination before having an obviously choreographed fight scene. Now, Connery also had some obviously choreographed fight scenes. But those were charmingly hokey. This one just looks bad. Oh, we also see Bond's shoulder bugging him a little bit during this scene, so at least they're taking the shoulder injury more seriously than in The World Is Not Enough.

If I wanted to do the movie a favor I'd point out how this scene shows us Silva's penchant for overly-complex plots. The assassin's victim is literally surrounded by Silva's men. He doesn't need the assassin at all, but hey it's been a while so we need a fight scene.

By the way, the woman in this scene is not wearing a backless dress. Neither is she wearing a backless dress in the next scene that she's in, where Bond mentions her backless dress. So, uh, huh.

Off to Macau, where ABC shows up. She flirts with Bond and he flirts right back and they probably have sex. By the way, if not for the internet, I would have no idea that Awesome Black Chick was Tia Dalma in Pirates of the Carribean.  We also found out that Lord Voldemort was tortured by the IRA for three months. So there's that. They're trying to plant the seed that he might be a villain. I wasn't paying attention because there was a hot chick on the screen. (Seriously, I'd be totally lost on the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones if I hadn't read the books.)

 Inside the Bad Guy From The Beginning's briefcase was a special casino chip. Obviously his payment, so Bond goes to collect it.  He and ABC wander around the casino talking to each other over their wireless earpieces. But enough of that, Bond cashes the chip in and gets to talk to Silva's sex slave. He also gets oodles of money which he has ABC gamble away. Probably. Anyway Silva's sex slave is named Severine.  Or perhaps just Sevrine. Not sure. She doesn't live long enough for me to check. Anyway he tells her that he knows she's a sex slave because of her tattoo and she tells him he knows nothing, Jon Snow. I mean what? So anyway Severine tells him she's on the yacht Chimaera (I didn't know Grand Admiral Thrawn was in this movie too) and then tells him that her bodyguards/minders will kill him. Instead he feeds one to a komodo dragon. This is also where the signature gun comes into play, but he loses it because the not-Oddjob bodyguard has it on him when the dragon eats him. Then Bond takes a page from the Live and Let Die playbook by escaping the monster pit by jumping on one of the monster's heads.

Then Bond gets to Severine's yacht and they have shower sex. Not sure how many shirtless scenes Craig's contract stipulates, but there have been several so far. By the way, I'm not sure how a real life sex slave would react to a naked dude jumping in the shower with her. Eh, it's not like they're going for a serious or realistic tone here.

M and Voldemort have another scene. He says they can't keep working in the shadows because there are no more shadows. Whatever that means.

Anyway, Silva's men go ahead and capture Bond and Severine (but not before Bond activates his radio) and take them to limbo from Inception. It's an abandoned island Silva made everyone abandon by making them think there was a chemical leak.  Then Bond meets Silva. He tells him a story about how he trapped a bunch of rats in an oil drum until there were only two left, and then those two were turned back into the wild to eat the rats out there. He says that he and Bond are the two survivors. Turns out Silva was in Hong Kong under M, back when M was just in charge of Station H through 97 (you know, after GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies). But now he's gone rogue. Yes, we have a Nemesis on our hands. A Nemesis is Bond's shadow. Red Grant in From Russia With Love and Trevelyan from GoldenEye are hands down the best two examples, and you know what they have in common? They're both played by guys who could have been Bond in their own right. But Silva isn't Bond, But Evil. He's Bond, But Nuts. It's like having Dr. Evil instead of Blofeld. He's John Simm's Master to Jon Pertwee's Doctor, and that just doesn't work. I mention this specifically because Bond gives a very Doctor-like response when he says "or a gas explosion in London." It's also pretty out of character for him.

Silva says there is nothing superfluous in his life, which is why he has this overly complicated plot to kill M, when as I pointed out before he could just waltz in and cap her on the crapper. And then he goes through this elaborate way of getting rid of Severine, namely having Bond try to shoot a glass off her head. He misses, because of his shoulder injury, so Silva kills Severine. Then Bond takes out all of Silva's henchmen without missing a single shot. You know, because his shoulder injury only kicks in at dramatic moments. (I'd also like to point out that he makes about half of these shots left-handed... so again I can't help but think of A Storm of Swords here.) And then that radio he activated earlier summons a fleet of helicopters.

So then M and Silva has a scene where Silva continues to be camp, until he rips out his prosthetic mouth and turns into... whugh. Hey remember that other film with hacking and a rogue MI6 agent with a deformed half-face? Yeah me too.

Q hacks into Silva's computer while the computer hacks into MI6 and gah you know what? I'm just going to call this next part "We copypasted a few pages from The Dark Knight."

Q continues to do his 11th Doctor impression and tells Bond half a minute too late that Silva is on the train. He takes an extra second to go one more frame, just to make extra sure. And then Bond does his best 9th Doctor impression with the "could you open the door... health and safety" thing. So they alert M, but she's not going to leave the hearing. She'd rather look dignified than live. So much for "to hell with dignity, I'll leave when the job is done." Keep your characters consistent, script! Anyway, Silva manages to give Bond the slip, but Bond figures out that he must have gone through the One Partially Open Door In The Entire Tube Station because Bond is Boring Invincible Comic-Book Superagent 007 F*cking Sherlock Holmes.

Back at the hearing, Mallory suddenly turns into a reasonable authority figure, maybe to stall for time and make M sit there longer, even though she's already sitting there. Silva drops a train on Bond, and Bond demonstrates Bond Villain Stupidity by letting him get his one-liner off instead of shooting him.

Then there's the part where the movie actually starts to get good. M gives a speech about how MI6 is still relevant, while Silva is riding to the building to take her out. It's perfectly edited... but really, Silva should have come in on M's line "how safe do you feel?" instead of some random Tennyson quotation. Anyway Silva gets in and takes out all the guards because guards are useless. Mallory takes a bullet in the shoulder protecting M. But it's his left shoulder, so he can still shoot perfectly. Speaking of still being able to shoot perfectly, Bond takes out a fire extinguisher from across the room in order to make a lot of smoke and force Silva to retreat.

Then Bond kidnaps M and takes her to his Aston Martin DB5. He threatens to eject M, but then M goes and ruins the joke by telling everyone what a button from a film nearly 50 years old actually does. Whyyyyyyyy? So once they're in a car that can't be traced (hey wait! Didn't they sell all Bond's stuff? All I want for Christmas is a competent script editor!!) they go to Bond's ancestral estate, Skyfall.

So M is bait for a trap for Silva. That makes sense. Not getting reinforcements is somewhat less sensible. Fortunately there's Kincaid, a character obviously written for Sean Connery and then not dropped when the director lost his nerve about asking him to come out of retirement. Kincaid reminds us all that "they" sold all Bond's stuff when they thought he was dead. AGAIN WITH THE FREAKING SCRIPT EDITING WHERE DID THE ASTON MARTIN COME FROM OMFGARBLE.

So they've got a pistol, two shotguns, a knife, and Kevin McCallister's cheat mode (booby-trap the house with pretty much nothing but dynamite). They manage to hold off a small army, both because blah blah Boring Comic-Book Superagent but also because, well, superior cover. Then realism sets in again when M gets shot. Then the realism goes out the window again when Bond outruns a fireball.

 Bond fights some random guy underwater in a frozen lake while Silva gets the drop on Kincaid (seriously, if Connery's not playing him, why the hell is he in this film? Now he sticks out like a third nipple*) and tries to get M to kill both of them.

*That's a reference to The Man With the Golden Gun, not Total Recall. Obviously.

Anyway Bond sticks a knife in his back so that's Silva done, and then M dies (!) and Bond cries and stupid people say this is the bestest Bond film ever because it's the first time Bond cries and those of us who have actually seen all the movies say "Oh my sweet summer child."

And then they're back in the Universal Exports offices. Chronological questions be buggered. That made me really happy. And Awesome Black Chick turns out to be Moneypenny, which is hilarious because I'm going to assume they had sex in Macau and the series will never contradict me.

I will give the movie this. It wanted to portray a bunch of world-weariness, and it accomplished that by recycling various compents from previous films. Ultimately, however, the film's biggest flaw is that it goes to such lengths to get away from Boring Invincible Comic-Book Superagent 007... and then has a knockoff of the Joker as the villain.

Final grade: B.

[Updated 2/25 for the Oscar reference.]