Skyfall

TAKE 1: One Man’s Opinion

…because film is largely subjective

 

by Frederick William Springer III

Skyfall

Release Date:   9 November 2012                                                     Runtime:   143 Minutes              

Review Date:  12 December 2012                                                      Rating:  5 (of 6)

While many are heralding Skyfall as the best Bond ever, I’m left wondering if they’ve seen Casino Royale.  While it’s a good installment to be sure, I’d say the poorly received Quantum of Solace even edges it out.

Quantum of Solace was slower paced and perhaps had less action than its predecessor (which I think is part of the reason the audience didn’t take to it), but Skyfall is painfully sluggish—you’re 80 minutes in before you even meet the villain.  Keep in mind, some movies are only 80 minutes long!  Yet, here you’ve practically watched an entire film and still don’t know who the antagonist is and, in his absence, the antagonizing wasn’t as strong as it should have been.

Once Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) is introduced, things do get more interesting, he being a formable opponent that’s fun to watch, and the pace then does pick up for the remaining 63 minutes.  If the movie had just been edited to start in the second half, then I might have jumped on the second coming band wagon but with the first half intact it has a lot to make up for.

The only personally clear cut thing that Skyfall did better than Quantum of Solace was their title sequence.  Skyfall probably also does slightly more character developing, but barely a noticeable difference on this front, and adding shades of Home Alone at that.  And on that note, if all that was saved from an estate sale was one rifle, would they really have had kept as much ammo around that was accessible?

*SPOILER ALERT*  What Skyfall does do is introduced 007 mainstays that have since been absent from the rebooted series.  Both are reinvented and refreshingly so.  Kudos!  Unfortunately, while filming, I had read they were casting the parts and it would have been more fun not knowing their involvement and being surprised when they appeared.  In fact, one is particularly molded to be a surprise but those casting notices mentioned the big difference from the old and I was able to pick the character out immediately.  Not to say it wasn’t still enjoyable, just not the big surprise they were building up to for viewers of the original series.  Actually, I don’t know why I’m talking in code because any 007 fans of the originals know exactly what 2 characters have been thus left out and will have figured out who I’m talking about by now (hence my spoiler alert).

One thing that did disappoint me was realizing they weren’t exploring an opportunity I momentarily thought they were.  In the You Only Live Twice novel, Bond had gotten amnesia and recouped, shacked up with a native, far away from the UK, everyone he knew thinking him dead.  I was excited to think they were incorporating this into the new series, only to find out that here Bond was only merely brooding before returning to work.