Skyfall

2012 • 143 minutes

About this movie

Bond's loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to haunt her. As MI6 comes under attack, 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost.

Ratings and reviews

Extremely satisfying entry in the James Bond film series, perhaps the best 007 film starring Daniel Craig, perhaps the best 007 film to date. Celebrating fifty years of James Bond, with 'Doctor No' having been released in 1962, 'Skyfall' explores a number of themes which help to both root the James Bond Series in the real world and also to satisfy fans of the series who may appreciate its more humorous turns with Roger Moore or with Sean Connery. There were two simple things that 'Skyfall' achieved that I loved the most, two things I'd never thought I'd see from a Bond film; one, the film is shot beautifully. The scenes with 007 stalking a sniper in a colorfully lit Singapore or set in the remote highlands of Bond's birthplace in Scotland give the world a sense of depth and of openness that had been all too absent in previous 007 films. Two, we meet a much more vulnerable and human James Bond, one who is wounded by gunfire (twice) in this film for the first time since 'Thunderball' and one who is slowly beginning to succumb to the weaknesses of old age. The film even explores Bond's childhood in visiting his birthplace in Scotland and exploring the deaths of his parents.

Skyfall is truly an awful film, and a tremendously disappointing deviation from what the new James Bond movies were shaping up to be. I'm not suggesting that the first two films in this new generation demonstrate artistic genius, of course, but they are certainly several orders of magnitude better in every conceivable way than this latest atrocity. The theme of old (the "old way" as well as the physically old characters) beleaguered by new feels contrived and awkwardly permeates the entire film.

"Bond girls" average around 48 years of age when one counts Dame Judi Dench. She is a serious actress, but this is not Oedipus Rex. The other two female leads, Marlohe in particular, make neither memorable characters nor, oddly enough, eye candy. The final smash-em-up is a low-stakes local affair, however noisy. Plot holes usually would not matter in a Bond film, but this one seems to pass itself as a part-time psychodrama, so incoherence rankles. Some decently choreographed fighting early on. Locations are ho-hum. Craig is a charmless Bond. Bardem is a good villain, but that is not enough.