Skyfall (2012)

starring Daniel Craig

directed by Sam Mendes

The movie opens with a chase through Istanbul involving motorcycles and then a train. Bond is pursuing a man who stole a hard drive with names and pictures of undercover agents. The man gets away and Bond gets shot by one of his fellow agents who was ordered by M to try and take out the thief while he and Bond were fighting. Bond falls from the train into a river. His body isn't found and after a few months he is declared dead.

Bond returns to London, after the funeral. He meets with M (Judi Dench) and then later Q (Ben Whishaw), the quartermaster. He follows a lead to Shanghai. He finds the man who stole the hard drive but the man falls to his death before Bond can find out to whom he gave the drive. Bond follows a lead to a casino in Macao. There he meets Severine, a woman who warns him about the men watching her. They try to stop him from leaving but with some help from the same agent, who first helped and then shot him in Turkey, he escapes.

Bond meets up with Severine and together they go to a mostly abandoned island that belongs to the Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), the man for whom she works. Silva is displeased with her and kills her but MI-6 shows up and Silva is taken into custody.

Silva is taken back to London. MI-6 thinks they have him but it turns out that he wanted them to take him there. Silva escapes. He tries to kill M while she is testifying at a Parliamentary committee hearing. Bond, after chasing Silva underground and on the London Underground, arrives just in time to prevent Silva from succeeding.

Bond take M to Skyfall, his ancestral home in Scotland. There they have a final showdown with Silva and a couple dozen of his thugs.

Thoughts

This is the first of the Daniel Craig movies which features a character named Q. Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) is not in this movie.

Ralph Fiennes plays Gareth Mallory, a bureaucrat who is trying to talk M into stepping down voluntarily.

I saw this movie in the theater when it first came out. I don't recall exactly how I felt about it. That says to me that I had mixed feelings about it because I think I would have a clearer memory if I loved or hated it.

I like this movie in bits and pieces. Overall I thought the set pieces were great. I wasn't too crazy about the final showdown. It felt sloppy compared to the other ones. There are some things that happen just a little too quickly in this movie. Silva gets captured and then escapes very quickly. This movie is too long and there is too much packed into it. I liked how they used the music and how they shot and edited together the chase scenes. Overall this is my favorite of the Daniel Craig movies, so far, but I wouldn't say this is a great movie.