The other day, I woke up and decided to go and see Skyfall, the new James Bond film celebrating 50 years of the best spy in Her Majesty's Secret Service. I was supposed to be waiting until next week to go and see it with all my Uni friends after the school holidays, but who can wait that long for a new Bond movie?! It's fairly safe to say that Casino Royale is my favourite Bond film, and when I heard reports that this one was even better I simply had to go! So I gathered up my one friend that had the entire day off (ah the student life) and off we went to a tiny cinema screen with our popcorn and drinks and watched with excited anticipation.
Now for the opinion part. To cut a long story short, I absolutely loved it! The movie starts with an amazing action sequence in Turkey, at the end of which Bond is shot and is presumed dead (although of course he isn't - spoiler!). However, a terrorist attack on MI6 and M drags Bond out of hiding and back into service as a double O. The usual action and adventure ensues with Bond discovering that the villain is attempting to seek revenge on M and it becomes Bond's job to protect her, ending with a spectacular battle between the two men and M caught in the middle.
This film manages to balance the adrenaline pumping action sequences with a storyline fit for any drama movie. The decision to include a lot of Bond's back-story and set the majority of the film in Britain only made it better for me (I'm possibly a little bit biased), and I particularly enjoyed the way that the relationship between Bond and M was shown with both humour and emotion.
The performances by the cast were equally brilliant (I would expect nothing less from a film with Judi Dench in it), but by far and away the outstanding performance of the film was Javier Bardem's portrayal of the Bond villain, Silva. Having seen 'No Country For Old Men' I knew that Bardem could play creepy, and he doesn't disappoint in this film. This is without doubt one of the best and most convincing Bond villains I have seen in a long time, especially from the Daniel Craig films, and the disturbing part is that I can kind of understand his motive behind the mayhem. Silva always seem to be on the edge of sanity but at the same time is completely composed and has a definite purpose.
Judi Dench is also outstanding, yet again, although I don't think I have had enough time to recover from the traumatic ending to comment on how amazing she is in this film.
Of course, this blog wouldn't be complete without mentioning Daniel Craig's performance. I think this is probably his best Bond performance to date. We all know that he can easily carry off the action sequences and the hard man appearance, but Craig manages to show Bond's vulnerable side with equal conviction making it a great performance and making him probably my favourite Bond thus far.
The whole film, accompanied by Adele's theme song (which makes a lot more sense when you see the film), makes for a pretty good combination. Now I wouldn't be naive enough to say that this is a perfect film. There are some parts in the middle that are pretty slow, some very obvious product placement scenes and there is one particular sequence that involves a Komodo dragon that seems a bit strange.
However everything else, from the introduction of the new Q and Miss Moneypenny and the nods to previous Bond films, to the suspense and excitement Sam Mendes manages to create from scene to scene, this is definitely a film worth seeing, whether you are a Bond fan or not.
Now for the opinion part. To cut a long story short, I absolutely loved it! The movie starts with an amazing action sequence in Turkey, at the end of which Bond is shot and is presumed dead (although of course he isn't - spoiler!). However, a terrorist attack on MI6 and M drags Bond out of hiding and back into service as a double O. The usual action and adventure ensues with Bond discovering that the villain is attempting to seek revenge on M and it becomes Bond's job to protect her, ending with a spectacular battle between the two men and M caught in the middle.
This film manages to balance the adrenaline pumping action sequences with a storyline fit for any drama movie. The decision to include a lot of Bond's back-story and set the majority of the film in Britain only made it better for me (I'm possibly a little bit biased), and I particularly enjoyed the way that the relationship between Bond and M was shown with both humour and emotion.
The performances by the cast were equally brilliant (I would expect nothing less from a film with Judi Dench in it), but by far and away the outstanding performance of the film was Javier Bardem's portrayal of the Bond villain, Silva. Having seen 'No Country For Old Men' I knew that Bardem could play creepy, and he doesn't disappoint in this film. This is without doubt one of the best and most convincing Bond villains I have seen in a long time, especially from the Daniel Craig films, and the disturbing part is that I can kind of understand his motive behind the mayhem. Silva always seem to be on the edge of sanity but at the same time is completely composed and has a definite purpose.
Judi Dench is also outstanding, yet again, although I don't think I have had enough time to recover from the traumatic ending to comment on how amazing she is in this film.
Of course, this blog wouldn't be complete without mentioning Daniel Craig's performance. I think this is probably his best Bond performance to date. We all know that he can easily carry off the action sequences and the hard man appearance, but Craig manages to show Bond's vulnerable side with equal conviction making it a great performance and making him probably my favourite Bond thus far.
The whole film, accompanied by Adele's theme song (which makes a lot more sense when you see the film), makes for a pretty good combination. Now I wouldn't be naive enough to say that this is a perfect film. There are some parts in the middle that are pretty slow, some very obvious product placement scenes and there is one particular sequence that involves a Komodo dragon that seems a bit strange.
However everything else, from the introduction of the new Q and Miss Moneypenny and the nods to previous Bond films, to the suspense and excitement Sam Mendes manages to create from scene to scene, this is definitely a film worth seeing, whether you are a Bond fan or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment