When Bond's latest assignment goes gravely wrong and agents around the world are exposed, MI6 is attacked forcing M to relocate the agency. These events cause her authority and position to be chall...
WHAT I LIKED: A Sam Mendes directed Bond movie was always an exciting and intriguing prospect, but what he did with 'Skyfall,' was properly brilliant and exceeded everyone's expectations, and the final product actually amounts to a film that's not only the best of the series, but also one that's a bit of an all-time favourite of mine.
Indeed, what's largely so different about this brilliant movie is that it decides to examine this fictional MI6 as a corrupt dinosaur of an establishment that's unwilling to admit its wrongs and goes to ridiculous lengths to patch up its own mistakes, and that immediately brings a heavier thematic and political significance to the table. The organisation acts underground and is summoned to court, they ignore protocol and make reckless decisions with little regard for collateral damage, and they put their agents through absurd physical and emotional trauma - all interesting things in their own right that equally provide perspective for Bond (who's blindly on the receiving end of all of this as a humanised victim rather than a hero) and M who embodies the corrupt establishment and is given more significant treatment here than in any other film in the series. Then of course there's Javier Bardem's brilliant villain character Silva who's a ghost of MI6's reckless past and is aiming to get revenge after his mistreatment whilst demonstrating to Bond the similar position he's in, and in the end it's clear that Mendes devotes a lot of attention to subverting the usual enlightened MI6/Bond and the evil villain expectation to tease the audience to look beyond the usual good guy vs bad guy thing and question the formula/system, much like Silva is inviting Bond to do.
But there's more to this being a great and admirable movie than all of that stuff, as Skyfall is also arguably the most enjoyable Bond movie of all. For a start the dialogue is snappier than ever before (helped partly by the introduction of a brilliant new Q for Bond to bounce off of) and the screenwriters deftly blend the thematic stuff with character development and witty humour without you noticing, but what's probably even more impressive than that is the physical side of things.
Indeed Skyfall is in fact a film I've described as one with a heartbeat - each and every edit working with the dialogue, sound effects and Thomas Newman's kinetic, swelling score to bring a sense of pace and organic tension that rises and falls throughout the film. That's not to mention the way Roger Deakins adds to the overall atmosphere with his astounding cinematography or the other touches like Adele's perfect theme song and the beautifully-haunting opening credits that accompany it either.
The beauty of it though is that all of that builds to a wonderful final act as well where the tension, the character stuff and the thematic foundations come to their heads in a finale all about acknowledging and embracing the past and its mistakes or traumas (Bond literally goes back in time to his childhood home at the end) and learning from them.
Overall then, the fact that it achieves all of that so cleanly and effortlessly in two and a bit hours means it winds up as the ultimate lesson in combining character significance, thematic realism and fun, kinetic blockbuster entertainment all at once. It's instantly crowned as the king of its series as a result. Mendes crafted another modern masterpiece here - Skyfall is one of my favourite films of all time.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: It could be argued that the kinetic pacing loses some of the potential poignancy, but it lets up perfectly in the more significant moments for that not to be a real problem.
VERDICT: A modern blockbuster masterpiece that seamlessly combines bold thematic storytelling with some properly emotional character stuff and smart, kinetic entertainment, Sam Mendes' 'Skyfall,' is not only the best film in its classic long-standing series, it's also one of my favourite films of all time.
