Review of Skyfall (2012) by Shineonsunfish — 29 Nov 2012

Really disappointed. The first two movies of this rebooted franchise were both excellent. They took place during an understandable time period, with a gritty and realistic Bond who had just been promoted to 007 status. He wasn't chatty, and we didn't care - his steely gaze and quick wit (not to be mistaken for quips - just watch Casino Royale's first scene with Vesper and you'll be able to tell the difference) told us that he was a man with a past. A past that he had no interest in divulging. We were treated to beautiful women (who were given character and personality), dry martinis, perfectly fitted tuxedos, and a sinister Bilderberg type group of powerful people controlling society from within. Flash ahead to Skyfall - Bond looks a good 15 years older, and is in the middle of a random assignment that leaves no resolution to the plot of the first two films. The first two films started with bone-achingly real foot chases through exotic locales. This one had a motorbike jumping onto a moving train. The villains in the first two movies were a terrorist banker and a philanthropist with sinister goals. This one is your typical mincing crazy person with a funny accent (homophobic, xenophobic, AND quite silly all in one, not that it's the actor's fault.) The first films included several types of women (all very beautiful, this is a Bond movie after all), who had varying relationships with Bond. This one had a young 007 agent whose ineptitude at her job ends with her taking the role of a secretary, and an abused sex slave who is questionably seduced and summarily executed and treated like a piece of trash (the horrific "waste of a good scotch" quip is inexcusable). Honestly, "it's a Bond movie, what did you expect" has no place in this conversation - I expected what I was led to expect from the first two movies of the reboot. A gritty, realistic, badass James Bond. Not someone quipping or using silly gadgets or having rapey scenes with random chicks. I am not an original James Bond fan. I don't care what they did in 1962 - that image of the swinging playboy is no longer relevant to this generation. And this movie tried so hard to be relevant, with it's cheap terrorism plot. And the last 30 minutes, while they had great action sequences taken out of context, made no sense to a larger plot, and awkwardly tried to shove in a very stupid and cliched past to Bond's life. The climactic scene left me feeling nothing, because there had been no foundation laid for any emotion regarding that character. And it dragged quite a bit - there's no reason for an action movie to be more than 2 hours long.

That being said, it certainly wasn't all bad. After the initial silliness of the motorbike chase, the fight atop the train was excellent. The entire scene in Shanghai was also done very well, and the actress playing Severine did a very good job with what was ultimately a very stupid role. The lighting was quite remarkable in the whole movie, and Javier Bardem did his best to infuse a traditional silly Bond villain with some pathos. The choice to make Q young was nice (even though he was painfully stupid for being such a computer whiz), and if they hadn't hit the theme quite so hard, it would have been nice to compare the old world vs. the new world through James Bond's eyes. And the courtroom scene was very enjoyable and tense, even though it was a bit silly after all the convoluted planning from Bardem. Unfortunately, this film felt out of context with the other two, putting the time frame oddly late and seeming to be either the end of a series or the beginning of a new one. Some huge gaps of logic in the needlessly silly plot make this definitely the worst Bond movie of the three, and independent of the series it was an extremely mediocre action flick.