In "Skyfall," that moment hits in the opening scene and never lets up. Bond (a never more assured Daniel Craig) stumbles onto a mission in Turkey gone horribly wrong, sparking a bravura chase sequence combining cars, motorcycles, trains, forklifts, disbelief, and anything else that happened to be near set that day. To say it challenges credulity is to miss the point (aren't all Bond movies supposed to open with a little swagger?).
What matters is it throws down the gauntlet for a movie that didn't come all this way, through all of MGM's famed financial woes, to be timid. Not only is it a superb James Bond movie and the best thriller of the year, but it's a great movie, period. Here is one bustling, invigorating entertainment representing what pop filmmaking can and should be. A breakneck series of "This is too good to be real, oh wait it is, will it ever stop, IT NEVER STOPS!"
Hyperbole, take a holiday.
Carrying 50 years of creaky franchise history on its shoulders, "Skyfall" and newcomer director Sam Mendes bridge the gap between the old and the new, the elegant and the gritty, the Connery and the Craig (stranding poor Timothy Dalton somewhere in the moat). After that disastrous Turkey mission that supposedly left Bond dead, MI6 headquarters in London finds itself the target of a terrorist bombing. Lured out of hiding but not much giving a damn for the company that abandoned him, Bond sets loose after the man responsible (a terrifyingly flamboyant Javier Bardem), whose motives reveal to be intensely personal.
Mendes and his screenwriting team present themselves as clear scholars of the Bond franchise, paying respects to the familiar tropes when necessary. This ain't no Mad Lib movie, though, filling in the blanks in a preordained structure. "Skyfall" sets to point the compass in a new direction, and it zigs just when you expect it to zag. Bardem holds court in the usual island lair, but he views it as a disposable novelty. The "Bond Girl" is all but an afterthought - disposable candy to cut a few scenes of the trailer around. And instead of an action climax with the fate of the world crashing down, Mendes opts for a lyrical ballet of images (although rest assured, gunfire and explosions abound).
What "Skyfall" ultimately delivers is a 2.5 hour movie with a razor focus. Bond isn't the scenery in some other man's play. Mendes turns the focus squarely on him and how it actually feels to have a license to kill in a career that will probably kill you first. If the movie doesn't ultimately answer what makes James Bond tick, it's because the character still must maintain that man-of-the-moment persona. By the end, enough tantalizing clues are still offered about his past, putting to rest the "James Bond is an ongoing code name" theory.
Structurally it resembles "The Dark Knight" more than anything else, gleefully tearing apart its franchise's past before putting it back together in a way we didn't even know we wanted. Bond and the villain don't engage in a fashion runway walk-off between impossibly suave and megalomaniacal (although they are indeed both that). What we get is far more interesting - two sides of the same broken coin, both hoping the other guy caves first. Clearly arriving on set wanting to create a classic Bond villain and nailing it, Bardem exists in his own world - hurt, disappointment, and pure burning nihilism all fighting on his face. "Skyfall" even makes room for a little latent homosexual tension between the two men with Bardem oozing film queen slime, if that's even a thing.
And Craig, of course, stands as the first Bond for whom a respectful comparison to Sean Connery isn't even necessary. He is the best there is. Hang it on the wall.
God, such serene confidence this movie moves with. Such immaculate, elegant pacing. Such a gripping fusion of thriller, character study, and fanboy cheering. Practically the whole thing rings with the joy of kids playing in the sandbox for the first time, and it affirms the Bond franchise as something that can revive itself as long as it wants as long as filmmakers like Mendes are around to charge the paddles.
I would marry "Skyfall," but I'd also let it have its way with me just as willingly.
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