Skyfall Review

Celebrating 50 years of Bond, James Bond is back in the new and explosive film Skyfall. I have been a James Bond film for the most of my life and it was one of my favourite film series' when I was growing up. I have however been a bit disappointed with the last few Bond films and was starting to think the franchise would never be good again. This isn't due to Daniel Craig as I think he's a good Bond and was one of the only good things about them films. It's poorer scripts that I blame and how they were trying to make James Bond a more realistic film. Okay I like realistic spy films like the first three Bourne film, but to change James Bond from a film that's full of tones of gadgets that couldn't be invented to a film with no gadgets, all in one film was too much too soon. Basically I felt the last two Bond films weren't as Bond-esque as they should have been.

Plot

SPOILER FREE

This film James Bond is in the middle of a mission to retrieve a hard drive that contains the identities of all the MI6 undercover agents. During the commotion, and whilst Bond is fighting the man with the hard drive another MI6 agent called Eve (played by Naomie Harris) who is aiding Bond on this mission gets asked to take down the target although she doesn't have a clear shot. She then accidentally shoots Bond who is presumed dead and the target gets away with the hard drive. After an attack on MI6 Bond returns to help M (played by Judi Dench) catch the man behind the attack, Raoul Silva (played by Javier Bardem), who has a personal connection to M.

Review

I loved this film and I can easily say that Bond is back. This is by far the best Bond film since Daniel Craig took over the role and is also better than the last two Pierce Brosnan films (The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day). It is also better than a lot of the other Bond films like The Living Daylights, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and A View to a Kill to name a few but (unlike the Mail on Sunday stated) it's not the best Bond film ever. This film also showed that Daniel Craig isn't the worst Bond and with the right scripts could land up being the best.

I was also happy to see the return of Q even if it was a very young person playing him. What I liked most about this film was that Bond's finally got a worthy villain in the form of Silva and Bardem played the part beautifully. What I really liked about the Silva character was how he was able too think so many moves ahead of MI6 and also liked the passion he had towards his hatred of M. I also liked how the Silva showed similarities to another Bond villain (which I wont name).

Another thing I liked about this film was how it devilled into Bond's past and how it mentioned his Scottish heritage. Something else returning from a past Bond film was the Aston Martin DB5 that was in Goldfinger, which is one of the (if not the) most famous James Bond cars ever. It even still had the old gadgets like the ejector seat (although it wasn't used) and the machine guns. The car being in this film along with the villain were probably the two things I loved most in the film as it's my favourite Bond car and one of the best cars to feature in a movie.

Another great thing about this film was the bike chase at the start of the film. The bike chase was amazing and I loved how it went over the lovely Istanbul rooftops and how it transitioned into a brilliant train fight. This film was also not lacking in fights and guns and had some of the best fights Bond has had in the last few films and probably the most explosions in a Bond film.

The only thing slightly negative about this film was how at some points it dragged, although this was crucial to the film and there are points like this in most of the Bond films, it still dropped the overall rating. The other thing that I felt was lacking in this film was how little the Bond girls were actually involved in the film as they could have been involved a bit more. I will end by saying another thing that was great about this film was how in the last 1/2 hour to 40 minutes there was lots of great action followed by a shocking finish and some shocking discoveries (both of which I won't spoil).

Final Verdict

This was a brilliant movie an I am glad to see that Bond is back to making good films. The film has lots of action and a couple of brilliant references to previous Bond films. It also has brilliant car/bike chases and some brilliant gun fights and regular fights. I would highly recommend this film and hope that this kind of quality continues in Bond films and that Bond is back to staying brilliant.

Rating: 4/5