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3/5
As a commentary on Bond, it's fairly interesting (duly noted that Silva states he was "M's favorite" from 1986 to 1997, covering the least productive period of Bond filmmaking) even as you see all the gears turning. You know Mallory is the next M (congratulations to Ray Fiennes, by the way) because he's called Mallory, and you know the villain is going to escape because he's been trapped and the remaining runtime just can't allow for that to remain true. You know there will only be one moment where Q's (cool new kid by the way, he looks like every anime representation of a white nerd I've ever seen) devices come in handy and, above all, you know the villain dies.
With all that knowing going on, a Bond movie tends to be whittled down to its bit parts. And that's where Skyfall gets less interesting. The opening hour is a total whirlwind of images and information, all handled loosely and glibly as though the hands of fate not only guided these characters along their paths, but left them little notes on their bedside table as well. And for all the cleanliness and zippiness of the storyline, not much of anything has happened: Bond cracks wise with a young female agent whose real name we never learn, fails at physical tasks that appear way too rigorous for a Sean Connery-esque Bond to endure, let alone a Brosnan or Moore, and then he convinces that strange, sassy black woman to shave him with a cutthroat razor by looking at her in the mirror. It's so clean that it borders on making very little sense at all.
But then you get Shanghai and all those crazy LEDs, and the wartorn island where the villain finally makes his entrance halfway through the movie, and the burning house in Scotland. Bardem's Silva may be a bisexual 1979-dressing impression of the Joker (neither Ledger's nor Nicholson's, I'll note) but if your metaphorical goal is to burn Bond's house down so that it can be built back up, I suppose you'll have to give yourself a character who can literally do that. I enjoyed his story as I do all the rare opportunities we get to see Bond square off against former coworkers - one of Skyfall's biggest shames is that Bond neither establishes nor breaks the sort of emotional ties that made Alec Trevelyan such an amazing Bond villain - but this was another hour, and seemingly another movie. This was Bond.
But the final set piece, again, shifts vibes and you're faced with a survival movie. The outdoor sections of this part are some of the coolest, smartest shots I've seen in a blockbuster, or at least for different reasons than the sort of pageantry that went into Ghost Protocol or the rest of this movie. It's hard to deny the hokey setup for all of it, though, with Mendes leading the crew and viewer through How to Setup a Safehouse 101. And it's not very fun where that safe house is located, either: the hard copy history of Bond's family wasn't established until the end of the novels' run, when Sean Connery shifted Ian Fleming's impression of who Bond was. By tying Craig's Bond to Connery's Bond so explicitly, not only is the fantasy that James Bond is simply 007's pen name totally crushed, but Craig's Bond's ongoing struggle against middle age and changing times seems to be pigeonholing the Bond character into a plotline he may not be able to survive: his death.
As entertainment, just a popcorn flick. But again, as a commentary on Bond...you might feel kind of sad, assuming you're invested at all.
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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." © Jay Bilas
"I don't read pages of rap lyrics, I listen to rap music." © Bombastic
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