By far Craig's best Bond so far

Rating: 8/10 (18 November 2012)

I was never a big fan of Daniel Craig's previous 2 outings as Bond. He seemed rather soulless in many ways compared to his predecessors although he probably ties with Timothy Dalton as closest to what Fleming had in mind (and I'm certainly not fond of the Bond in the books whom you would probably cross the road to avoid if you met him in real life). The tone of the previous 2 films was also something I wasn't too fond off, I'm not sure I want to sit around on a bank holiday watching Bond having his testicles beaten and why they felt it necessary to include the rape scene in 'Quantum of Solace' is beyond me?
But Skyfall makes up for that in a great many ways. Genuinely exciting and with some thrilling action sequences, Daniel Craig really seems to have found his stride in the role (much as Connery and Moore didn't produce their best Bond film until their third outing). What's more we very much have a more emotional and human Bond in this version, bitter at M for her treatment of him, disillusioned with the service but still faithful to it, a decent cynic (an allegory for Britain's place in the world?). Very much more set in the real world, M battling against parliamentary oversight and ethical questions as to the morality of the double-Os, (shades of the War on Terror?) being held to account for a fiasco that is in no way her fault and finding herself the scapegoat for press, public and parliament. We finally explore Bond's past, finding him an orphan with M cast very much as a mother figure to him as the villain points out. With her death and the introduction of a new male M, Q and Moneypenny we have almost a complete reboot of the series.
Good stuff? Love Moneypenny, didn't guess the twist until the rooftop sequence where she talks about taking a backroom job. Wonderful train sequence, right up there with Roger Moore in 'Octopussy' and the bike chase is terrific. M's death comes as a complete shock, really was the last thing you expected. I kept expecting one of the supporting players to be revealed as a traitor but they never were. Love the very human and fallible Bond who is genuinely out of shape and can't shoot straight, too often in films we have heroes who are supposed to have gone to pot yet perform feats that would be beyond the ability of an Olympian. The Bad? The death of the villain's girlfriend was depressingly predictable and the sadism of it distasteful. The whole thigh-stroking scene was a bit out there (especially given the homophobia of Fleming's books), I wondered if we were watching Torchwood or something? The idea of luring the villain to a final showdown wasn't bad but couldn't Mallory have dispatched a helicopter full of SAS to help them out? One cliché I find truly distasteful is that evil=deformed, human nature maybe but I'd rather have a deformed hero than a villain. All told great stuff and I look forwards to Craig's next 2.