Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond movie and the third starring Daniel Craig, deftly balances the standard action fare that we have come to expect and cherish in the franchise while also adding just enough innovation to make it feel fresh. Capably directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) and gorgeously shot by Roger Deakins, the film combines the best of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to make what is the best Bond movie of the modern era.
The bare bones of the plot are rather a cliché, uninteresting action movie set-up: Bond, accidentally shot by another agent and presumed dead, is sprung back into action when MI6 loses a hard drive containing all the undercover agents embedded in terrorist cells across the globe. In his travels across Turkey, China, London, and Scotland, he alternatively tracks and flees from the mercenaries responsible, spearheaded by Javier Bardem as the quirky, terrifying Raoul Silva. There is a subplot centered on the growing incompetence and forced retirement of M (Judi Dench) and the deterioration of Bond’s status as an elite spy.
Mendes could have very easily let the plot slip into a breakneck, impersonal caper, but there is a darker, emotional undercurrent absent from the suave and collected Bonds of the past. Here, Bond and the rest of MI6 are fallible, physically and perhaps technologically overmatched like never before. For the first time, we’re not always positive that he will find a way out of every predicament. The stakes are enhanced by new information about his past and severe judgement mistakes on M’s part, which make for more interesting, complex characters than we’re used to from the series.
This is not to say that Mendes does not allow himself some of the familiar, annoying action movie tropes: there are lots of bespectacled techies typing rapidly on computers, villains explaining their master plan before acting on them, and plenty of off-target gunshots for a bunch of highly-trained assassins. Yet Skyfall’s action sequences are smart and interesting, markedly different from the standard chase-and-shoot scenes present in lesser films. The closing face-off on Bond’s family estate is genuinely terrifying, a shootout on a grand scale that’s also somewhat believable and emotionally interesting to boot. It’s a scene that distinguishes Skyfall from the rest of the franchise, elevating it to a movie that stands on its own instead of simply checking off a list of standard characters, lines, and plot points.
After the misstep that was Quantum of Solace, Skyfall puts Bond back on the right track, setting a standard for a new type of hero and a new type of action film, one as emotionally and visually interesting as it is pulse-pounding.
