Skyfall opens with Bond shot off a train and falling into a river, and the image of him sinking into darkness while the title song begins is the franchise's most arresting opening transition. Sam Mendes' 2012 film combines the Craig era's emotional seriousness with a cinematic intelligence and a visual grandeur that the franchise had not previously reached.
At a Glance
Director: Sam Mendes
Runtime: 143 minutes
Starring: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris
Release: 2012
Critics Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars, the franchise's most visually distinguished entry and one of the strongest action films ever made)
Audience Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars, visually breathtaking)
Plot
Bond is presumed dead after a mission goes wrong, returns to service when MI6 is attacked, and pursues former agent Silva whose vendetta against M leads to a final confrontation at Bond's ancestral home in the Scottish Highlands. The Shanghai skyscraper sequence is the film's most visually striking passage, its neon-lit silhouette work and reflected geometry giving the sequence a painterly quality that has no precedent in the franchise. The Skyfall climax is the film's most emotionally devastating sequence in terms of narrative stakes, bringing Bond's personal history and M's institutional loyalty into direct confrontation in a location stripped of the franchise's usual glamour. The plot's treatment of Bond's age and physical decline gives the film a dimension the more conventionally action-focused franchise entries seldom explored, and the early sequences in which a diminished Bond struggles to pass his fitness assessments give the character a fallibility that makes his eventual recovery feel genuinely earned.
Characters
Craig's Bond is given the franchise's most personally revealing material, a character whose age, physical decline, and ancestral history give the film its central dramatic weight. His performance in the film's most exposed sequences is the most assured of his mid-franchise career, and the character's relationship with M gives the film its most emotionally charged supporting dynamic. Javier Bardem's Silva is the franchise's most theatrically formidable villain, a former MI6 agent of personal menace and psychological complexity whose obsessive vendetta against M gives the antagonist dynamic its most personally charged expression. His introduction sequence is the most accomplished villain entrance in the franchise's history: the single unbroken shot as he walks toward Bond across the empty chamber is one of the most carefully staged moments in the Craig era. Judi Dench's M is given her most significant material and her most emotionally consequential conclusion, a portrayal of institutional loyalty and personal courage that stands as her finest franchise performance. Ralph Fiennes' Mallory is introduced with a quiet authority that immediately establishes the character's eventual significance to the franchise.
Meaning / Themes
The film's central concern is the relationship between age and relevance: Bond and M's institutional loyalty are tested against the question of whether the old ways of doing things have any place in a changed world, a meditation on loyalty and the cost of institutional service the more conventionally action-focused franchise entries seldom engaged with. Silva functions as a dark mirror to Bond, a former agent who was abandoned by the institution he served and chose destruction where Bond chose endurance, and the contrast gives the film a thematic coherence that extends well beyond its action sequences. The Skyfall climax resolves this thematic tension through M's death, which is the film's most emotionally consequential moment and its most honest answer to the question of what loyalty ultimately costs.
Direction
Mendes' direction is cinematically purposeful, with a command of the film's visual ambitions and its more intimate moments that gives the film a tonal range and an emotional coherence the franchise's more routine entries rarely sustain. Roger Deakins' cinematography is the film's most important creative contribution after the performances, giving the franchise its most visually distinguished achievement and making Skyfall one of the most beautiful action films ever made. The Shanghai sequence demonstrates what the collaboration between Mendes and Deakins can achieve at its peak: every frame is composed with a precision and an intentionality that the franchise's more workmanlike cinematography never approached. Mendes pitches the film at a register of visual ambition and emotional intelligence, with a cinematic quality and a sophistication the franchise had not previously reached at this level. The film's willingness to engage directly with Bond's age and physical decline gives it an honesty and a personal vulnerability the more conventionally action-focused franchise entries seldom pursued. The decision to set the climax not in an exotic international location but at a rain-soaked Scottish estate is a deliberate tonal choice, stripping the franchise of its usual glamour in favour of something rawer and more personal. Adele's title song is the franchise's most vocally powerful, and Thomas Newman's score gives the film a weight and an atmospheric range that suit its more visually demanding passages.
Final Verdict: The franchise's most visually distinguished entry. Craig's portrayal of Bond's vulnerability and resilience gives the film a personal conviction the more professionally composed earlier performances lacked, Bardem's Silva is the franchise's most psychologically complex villain, Dench's M is given her most affecting and most irreversible conclusion, and Mendes' direction with Deakins' cinematography gives Skyfall a visual beauty and an intelligence that make it one of the most satisfying Bond films of any era. Roger Deakins' cinematography received an Academy Award nomination, and Adele's title song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the first Bond title song to receive the honour.