SKYFALL - movie review

First of all I have just got to get this off my chest. OMG Daniel Craig runs funny in Skyfall. Not sure what’s happened to him in the last four years since QoS but he looks really strange now. Even more so than Tom Cruise when he runs fast. Very strange. Right, good, glad I’ve got that off my chest.

Right pretty much everyone has seen it so this isn’t going to be a massive review, more a collection of my thoughts about the movie. Brace yourself

Skyfall is by far the best Bond movie Daniel Craig has been in. I have niggles which I’ll go to in a moment, which really aren’t that big a deal when the overall movie is so good.

Please be aware that there will be spoilers and some big ones at that so if you’ve not watched Skyfall I suggest you read no further until you have. Otherwise this review might just piss you off a little.

The script for this movie is pretty awesome brining in a great villain in the shape of Javier Bardem. His first scene with Bond is a joy to behold with some wonderful verbal sparring and even some flirting, which is just cracking stuff. There’s a little bit of a lull in the first half of the movie until Bardem makes an appearance but nothing to make you drop off to sleep over. Judi Dench as M is rather wonderful too, they have made her character so important to these new Bond films that the decision to kill her off at the end does seem a bit mystifiying to me and even makes me ponder whether that is a HUGE mistake. However when you think that the replacement is Ralph Fiennes, who is introduced in this film as the character of Mallory, you do think that perhaps it isn’t. Dench’s scenes with both Craig and Bardem are superbly written and played to the hilt by the actors. The music in the film is a little bit of a mixed bag. Thankfully we finally get some Bond theme in some of the action and at other various places which is awesome but I did find overall the score for this film a bit erratic overblown for my tastes. At times the music get very mellow dramatic and was not a patch on the scores David Arnold has produced in the previous five movies. Bring him back for the next one please.

Skyfall opens brilliantly with a fantastic action scene, laced with some nice humour. Craig has got comfortable now as Bond and it shows as he effortlessly flits between hard bastard and smooth talker. Something that he was not so good at in the first two movies. the opening scene seagues beautifully into the opening song by Adele which is wonderful. After this is does get a bit talky and this is the slow part until Bardem makes an appearance. Once he’s on screen things really kick off and build up a head of steam to a rather fun ‘Straw Dogs’ like ending. Cinematography is stunning, this could be the best looking Bond film ever made. The aforementioned actors are all at the top of their game and have been expertly directed by Sam Mendes. Sadly where Mendes lets himself down for me is in the action stakes.

After the superb opening action scene and one stunningly shot fight in a room of glass the rest of the action for me was all a bit ordinary. Nothing really got me excited. The Straw Dogs lite ending was particularly disappointing and whoever decided that Craig and Bardem wouldn’t have a proper toe to toe punch up at the end needs to be fucking shot. The whole film seemed to be building up to these two brilliant agents having a final confrontation, a Skywalker Vs Vader if you will and what happens. Bond throws a knife in his back and Bardem staggers a bit and drops dead. That definitely annoyed the fuck out of me. So if Mendes is gonna be hired for the next film, please for the love of 007 hire an action director for the other bits because you only have to look again at Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to see the action scenes in those film piss all over anything in Skyfall. Bond needs awesome action. This one just doesn’t have it for me.

Another thing that ticked me off is having the gun barrel scene at the end of the film. This to me is a totally pointless place to have it as I always found the gun barrel bits got me excited for the film I was about to watch. It’s the warm up act before we go into the pre-credits bit. This is a teeny niggle but I want that feeling of being a kid watching a Bond movie.

So I found the action disappointing but the rest of the film is so good that I can live with some not so awesome action. But because of that I can’t say this is the best Bond film ever as a lot of other reviews would have it. It’s better than Casino and Quantum but just imagine if this one had had some the terrific action of those films in it. Oooh now that would be amazing. Still ultimately this does the best thing it can do. It makes you really excited for the next movie, which seeing as this one has taken more money than any other Bond film in history means they’ll probably be getting their skates on now. Roll on 18th February when Skyfall is out on DVD and roll on Bond 24