Above Average

Rating: 7/10 (23 November 2012)

Skyfall was the first Bond movie I have seen in a LONG time. The main draw of the series is that men want to be him, and I don't really end up doing that. But this episode was fun to watch anyway. First, because of the quality of the visuals. The title sequence and the scenes in Scotland looked great. Second, I appreciated how they took every opportunity to do things differently from how they would have been handled in an older Bond movie. Q doesn't have any gadgets, the villain isn't trying to take over the world, Bond isn't invincible, and the female lead plays a much different role. Javier Bardeem's villain is different enough from other bad guys to make him interesting, although he can't really compete with Anton Chigrgh. The scene when he takes out his dentures was very memorable. The story is that he was an ex-agent who was sold up the river by M, and he has spent his life building an empire to plan his moment of revenge. He's a computer expert, so he can hack anything and cause any trouble he wants. He gets captured so he can get access to M, and Bond fights him off to end the second act of the movie and set up the final sequence. Then came the part I really admired: Bond, M, and an elderly gamekeeper rig an old Scottish mansion to hold off a gang of villains. They are coming to kill M. I thought the relatively small stakes was much more interesting to watch than the usual save-the-world action sequence. The movie felt overlong, so that by the end, it had lost some tension. But overall, it was entertaining, one that I would be willing to watch again some day.