Movie Review: Skyfall

The Bond franchise has been around for over fifty years for a very good reason. For starters, the character is beautifully iconic but intrinsically simple; he’s a good guy trying to stop bad guys. On top of that, he shags everything above an ‘8’ and wears reeeeally cool clothes. What’s not to love?

By Mike Sheridan

When Daniel Craig was cast as 007 in Casino Royale, there was hope that the Bond franchise was moving in a more realistic direction. That film's success owed a certain level of stylistic  prowess to The Bourne Series, but it still stood on its own as a genuinely thrilling action flick. Now, in his third outing as Bond, Daniel Craig stars in easily the best film of the series since the early days of the Sean Connery era. Of course, having Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes on board has certainly helped...

This is back-to-basics Bond. The film opens with Craig being accidentally clipped by another agent and subsequently presumed ‘Killed in Action’. While the British Secret Service basically get on with things, it turns out that Bond is in fact living on a beach somewhere, drinking like Hunter S. Thompson and riding like Seabiscuit. One night, while partaking in some much deserved merriment at a local bar, he happens to see that his country needs him – so he throws on the suit and slips back into 'killing bad guy' mode.

After a bit of plot cementing, the Bond we know and love is back - but he's also considerably more vulnerable than we’ve ever seen him before; his injury and the passage of time have rendered him a shadow of his former self. Nevertheless, he's still more than capable of slapping the sh*te out of whatever wrongsort comes his way - that is, until Javier Bardem’s villain turns up. In Raoul Silva we have a Bond villain capable of matching 007, but also someone who has a secret connection with Judi Dench’s ‘M’.

What follows is something with a lot more depth than we’re used to with this series. Mendes is a director known for his character work, and he succeeds in humanising all of the main characters while offering an insight into the Bond's past that we’ve never seen before. He also directs the entire cast to series-best performances, with Craig now truly owning the role. There's no doubt that people will speak of his take on 007 in a manner similar to Connery's in the coming years.

Superb filmmaking first and foremost, Skyfall is possibly the best Bond flick so far.