The Bond movies have always interested me in the way they’ve changed to fit the time period. The first film in the series, “Dr. No” way back in 1962, if a movie that I think really isn’t very good. Sean Connery is great in the role of Bond, and the films get better as they go on, but the first film is a fairly cheesy, kind of weird movie. However it still works, thanks mostly to the charms of Connery, and led to a series of movies so successful that 50 years later the franchise is still going, with no end in sight. Lucky for us, the movies are also still good. Sure, there have been some very bad ones in there (especially the previous entry in 2008, “Quantum of Solace,” which is garbage), but with the 23rd entry “Skyfall,” the Bond franchise may have gained it’s best film yet.
Bond films have never been all too focused on plot. You’ve got Bond, with all his usual womanizing and martini-drinking, a big bad villain, and some big plan for Bond to stop. This time around, we get all the usuals, don’t worry. Daniel Craig (who is just barely below Connery as the best Bond) is back for his third time as Bond, but this isn’t the Bond we’ve become used to.
The film opens with a mission gone wrong, and in the process he’s shot accidentally by another agent, Eve (Naomie Harris). He survives, but is presumed dead, so ends up taking a bit of time off. When he hears of an attack on MI6 targeted towards M (Judi Dench), he returns to England to get back in the field. He’s not in great shape, even his aim is off, but he still heads out after Silva (Javier Bardem), a man with a personal vendetta against M.
What makes this Bond especially interesting is the way it, unlike any of the previous Bond films I’ve seen, addresses how the franchise changes, Craig’s era of Bond films are these much darker films compared to a lot of the silliness of the films Connery or even Brosnan were in. So while “Skyfall” does contain the things we know and love about Bond, it also acknowledges the fact that it’s 2012 right now. There are callbacks to the prior films, but classifies them as the past. When Bond meets his new gadget expert Q (Ben Wishaw, who was great earlier this year in “Cloud Atlas” and is great here as well), all he’s given is a gun and a radio. “Doesn’t feel much like Christmas,” Bond remarks, almost disappointed. “Were you expecting an exploding pen?” Q replies. “We don’t really do that anymore.”
Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” “Road to Perdition”) directs the hell out of this movie, with some really incredible action set pieces, but also the smaller, more intimate parts. It’d be criminal not to mention the amazing work cinematographer Roger Deakins (A 9-time Oscar nominee, who shot films like “No Country for Old Men” and “Jarhead”), who manages to make every single frame of this movie beautiful to look at. It’s really well written, too; aside from a third act of fairly questionable plausibility, it manages to balance being an entertaining spectacle, a fairly dark drama, and most of all just a really great Bond movie.
Craig is great as usual, but Bardem as the villain is an exceptional standout. We already know how scary he can be (“No Country for Old Men”) but here he takes on a more flamboyant, almost cartoonish kind of crazy, the type of Bond villain we’re used to in the cheesier Bond films. Bardem is able to, for the most part, make the character work in this modern setting, never going too far with the craziness as to still remain threatening. Dench is great as M, and unlike most of the other Bond films gets an actual character arc here. The rest of the cast is good, but underused, as is usual with films of this sort.
“Skyfall” reminds us that, in a time when we get countless remakes, reboots and sequels every single week at the theater, they all still have the potential to be great. The Bond series has to be the only one to still be going strong at film 23, and if this is any indication of what the future of the franchise will be, we’re in for a great films 24 and up.
4.5/5 Stars