Skyfall: Die, Bond, Die!

movies / November 11, 2012

By Eileen Jones

First things first: Roger Deakins is the god of cinematographers. As you know, he’s the Coen Brothers’ long-time DP—your cue to salute—and he’s on the job here in Skyfall, the latest Bond movie. Another Coen film crew member, Dennis Gassner—salute, goddammit!—is handling the production design. So the visuals oughta win Oscars, but they won’t.

Fuckin’ Deakins, that guy can shoot, man! You’ve gotta see the night sequence in Shanghai! Scary-tall skyscrapers with their huge panes of neon-reflecting glass, against which men with guns stalk around and lose themselves in patterns of swirling, shifting colored light. It’s so staggeringly beautiful, you think, “Huh, turns out modernity was worth it after all.”

Beautiful cinematography—luxurious, decadent, eye-sating imagery dragging at your attention just as you most want to concentrate on who’s killing whom—can be very effective in action films that are really cranking. And the first half of Skyfall really cranks.

The opening action scene is one of those classically great chases punctuated by fights that everyone has loved since back in the old silent-film-serial days, especially when they involve more and more daunting modes of transportation. Here, the featured transpo goes from cars, to motorcycles—there’s a kind of motorcycle-parkour scene, if that makes sense, riding up stairs and over roofs and through windows and all that I-Brake-For-Nothing-and-No-One kind of urban fun—to a speeding train, to a bulldozer on TOP of the train…

The explicitly stated moral of the film is, “The old ways are the best.” In honor of the 50^th anniversary of Bond films, the whole movie’s a tribute to the glories of Bonds Past, and to doing it old school. This is more classic genre stuff, because action films generally, even the most high-tech ones, find a way to old-school it, casting off unsatisfactory long-range weaponry and computerized gadgetry for knives and kung fu kicks and fisticuffs. They often have to get very contrived to manage it, as Skyfall does. There are big laughs to be had in the much weaker second half of the film, watching the narrative struggle to shove Agent 007 back into the Bondian past—look, it’s the Aston Martin!—and then ever further back to a kind of wishful Tory paradise—look, it’s the wilds of Scotland, where English toffs go to rip off Celtic warrior culture and get kilted and primal!

Skyfall is a true genre film in its reliance on audience familiarity and affection. If you don’t like action and you don’t like Bond films, stay away, no matter how big the box-office momentum is. (It’s huge.) Me personally, I’m not a Bond fan as a rule. Too many quips, too much Tory-love, all that God Save the Queen crap. That whole thing at the Olympics, with Daniel Craig as 007 going to fetch Queen Elizabeth II? Blech. Wish he’d dumped her out of the airplane for real, after forgetting to give her a parachute.

So I was kinda suffering through parts of it. What saved the experience was, as I might’ve mentioned before, I am a big action fan AND a big film noir fan, and this action is noir-ized all over the place. Personally, I liked the Casino Royale move to noir up James Bond, make him a muscle-bound, brooding alcoholic who looks like an irritated blonde ape in his tuxedo. I thought it made all the difference as far as what the film industry calls “relatability.”

So while others are complaining that James Bond has been turned into Jason Bourne’s glummer cousin, I’m the one hugging myself with glee when Skyfall goes totally noir and—

SPOILER ALERT

—kills off James Bond right at the crest of that splendid first action scene. Yeah! You get to see it in pristine detail! Take that, Bond, you martini-drinking Type-A wanker! It’s gorgeous! First the friendly-fire gunshot, then the long plunge off a bridge into deep water, Daniel Craig as Bond sinking down and down, the thick red blood drifting up and up…aaaand roll opening credits!

Now THAT, my friends, is how you start a movie properly.

I never realized till that scene how much I yearned to see James Bond die convincingly. Give the people what they want and they’ll turn out every time! Love those opening credits, too, so hilariously doomy and Dali-esque and elaborate, full of swirling red and tombstones and kaleidoscopic nudie girls getting split up the middle and recombined.

Though in certain critical quarters there’s some doubt expressed as to whether this death-drive is good for the Bond franchise. Dana Stevens of Slate wrinkles her pretty brow over this one: “Skyfall leaves you wondering whether this incarnation of the character has anywhere left to go.”

Ha, these provincial rubes trained up in a blandly life-affirming school of filmmaking! They really oughta get out more, cinema-wise!

Protagonist-death is wonderful in film, gets the whole party started afresh, as film noir routinely demonstrates. People back from the dead, in films anyway, tend to return improved in every way. They’re supernaturally powerful and therefore fascinating or, in the noir/action regimes, they’re angry and surly and kill-hungry and in a state of morbid despair shot through with occasional gleams of black humor.

Either way, they’re my kinda people.

When Bond returns, resurrected by some miracle we never get to see or hear about, boy, is he pissed off. And he was already pretty testy to begin with because, I forgot to mention, Bond is getting old. Aging Daniel Craig has this angry grimace, in the early film scenes when things aren’t going his way, that’s so big it’s like tectonic plates shifting in his craggy face, and you can read its meaning from space: “What the fuck’s going on, I’m better than this!”

Only, maybe not so much anymore.

Oh, it’s terrific. Sure it’s self-reflexive in a way that would be dopey if you thought about it—the James Bond franchise itself is getting old in more ways than one, see?—but you don’t have to think about it, the film’s big and fast enough to distract you. Screenwriters who came up with this mid-life crisis plot, we salute you as well. (Robert Wade, Neil Purvis, and John Logan, for those keeping score at home.) Bond getting slow and achy and grey, and fighting it desperately, straining every sinew trying to do as many macho pull-ups as he used to do—and failing! It just plain couldn’t be more inspired. Because again—in case you forgot my larger argument—pay attention here—we WANT this fucker dead! Then we want him to return in another sequel so we can watch him suffer and fall apart some more, for real, the whole biological nightmare of aging, and then kill him again with even greater enthusiasm! Die, Bond, die die die DIE!!

Though I should point out, before you get too excited to see this thing, that after the terrific early stuff the movie slows down considerably. Everything grinds to a halt in order to present us with the Bond villain, Silvo, played by Javier Bardem. This performance is getting a lot of press because Silvo brings the gay to Bond films, which some might say is bringing coals to Newcastle, but okay. To hear the promoters tell it, Silvo induces homosexual panic in 007 (and the audience) by inflicting loving caresses on him during the obligatory torture scene.

It’s very tame stuff, though. Bond stays pretty blasé with that villainous hand on his thigh. “What makes you think this is my first time?” he smirks. He was educated at Eton, after all.

And oddly enough, Bardem isn’t all that amazing here. Good, of course, but nothing to tweet about. Maybe after Bardem’s hair-raising achievement as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, a mere Bond villain, even one sporting an unsettling dyed-blonde coiffure and matching eyebrows, looks pretty quaint.

Silvo also drags with him a load of exposition, all about—

SPOILER ALERT

—how he and Bond were both orphan boys recruited by M (Judi Dench doing her best doughty old dame shtick), who notes coldly, “Orphans make the best agents.” M stands for “Mum” in this tale of mother-hatred. So the plot is, both orphan boys are mad at Mum, who sacrificed them when expedient For the Good of the Country, though only one boy plans to kill her in ludicrously elaborate and protracted ways, while the other boy tries to save her.

It’s a Bond family melodrama, if you’re up for that.

The whole rest of the movie never really lives up to the great early stuff. For one thing, Bond gradually starts to cheer up. Lotta quips, lotta quips. And apparently the sun never sets on the British empire, because irony-free Anglophilia is rampant: the Union Jack waving bravely all over the place, Tennyson quoted at length, and M’s desk prop, a Winston Churchill-esque china bulldog that can’t be destroyed despite London bombings, keeps turning up, cracks mended, to represent Great Britain’s ten-millionth finest hour.

Also, Ralph Fiennes insinuates himself into the franchise as—

SPOILER ALERT

—the replacement M, playing a seemingly uptight bureaucrat revealed to have hidden depths, i.e. he earned his stripes in the field battling the Irish Republican Army. In this movie, that’s considered a GOOD thing, and Fiennes sports such a clichéd stiff-upper-lip, quiet-British-valor air, it makes you love the IRA even more, if possible.

And finally, you get to the insane Scotland sequence, the grand finale of the film. Here’s Dana Stevens again, still batting a thousand:

…[T]he last act, which takes place at the gloomy abandoned Scottish estate where, we learn, James Bond was born and orphaned, is one of the few passages from a Bond film I can remember that’s genuinely moving.

God, she’s hilarious! And so is this sequence, a real hoot, as in “Hoots mon!”

Yeah, turns out James Bond is of old Scottish stock—this is revealed in one of the Ian Fleming books, apparently, but who cares?—which you discover when he piles M into the vintage Aston Martin and heads for home. He drives up the long dirt road through the moors to Skyfall Manor, past the statue of the giant stag on top of a stone pillar, and here’s where you expect to hear bagpipes skirling and have some old world plaid-wearing servant come out with a torch and greet 007 as “THE Bond,” the last of the great Clan Bond!

Instead, Groundskeeper Willie comes out and says, “I was wrestling wolves when you were still suckling at your mother’s teat!”

Nah! It’s actually “Gamekeeper Kincade” who’s bearded to the eyebrows and ready to fight to the death for any reason whatsoever, so same difference. Roguish old Albert Finney plays him looking as if he wants everyone to realize he thinks it’s a pretty funny joke, plus they’re paying him boatloads of cash.

Still, like I said, the first half’s good. British director Sam Mendes, a useless blot on the American landscape up to now, making drearily “meaningful” films for the pompous middle-brow set like American Beauty and Rendition Road, has found his purpose in life: making juiced up James Bond films.

Yet another misguided director saved by genre film! Huzzah!

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60 Comments

Add your own

1. Doctor Memory | November 11th, 2012 at 5:54 pm
About right. This was basically the Bond Greatest Hits movie, or the clips episode if you will. Which is fine: the Bond franchise certainly has enough hit singles (as it were) to support such a thing. (Even if many of them are loved far more for nostalgia than actual merit.)
But it’s a little depressing to have it confirmed, after the stillborn “Quantum” that nobody at Eon actually has the slightest clue why Casino Royale was such a breath of fresh air. I enjoy watching Javier Bardem cash a paycheck as much as the next guy, but Casino Royale’s complete lack of over-the-top supervillains (nevermind embarrassing 1960s holdovers like Ms. Moneypenny, which this film wasted Naomie Harris’ only tolerable performance to date in trying to re-establish) was its primary advantage.
2. D | November 11th, 2012 at 7:37 pm
I thought it was ridiculous, a farce a parody of bond films. i didn’t believe any of the danger. a high budget snl skit of bond mixed with chris nolan/batman style action? the “noir” was contrived.
i can’t believe everyone’s loving it.
3. chon deadle | November 11th, 2012 at 11:37 pm
Bond was better when it was a comedy about a young, Shatneresque Sean Connery being good at fighting
4. Michal | November 12th, 2012 at 12:58 am
I for one enjoyed the irony free anglophilia.
Is there such a thing as a “genre review”?
5. Marlon Brawndo | November 12th, 2012 at 5:05 am
Bond is a humorless prick, the perfect poster boy for capitalism.
6. gc | November 12th, 2012 at 5:38 am
the replacement M, playing a seemingly uptight bureaucrat revealed to have hidden depths, i.e. he earned his stripes in the field battling the Irish Republican Army. In this movie, that’s considered a GOOD thing, and Fiennes sports such a clichéd stiff-upper-lip, quiet-British-valor air, it makes you love the IRA even more, if possible.
You suppose somebody was trying to make a statement by getting the concentration camp boss from Schindler’s List for the part?
Yeah, probably not.
7. Willard Romney | November 12th, 2012 at 10:24 am
I used to wank to Bond films as a young, turgid Mormon. A goldfinger in my anus from Ann always helped me breed another “T.” I never imagined they’d get a butch-looking Judi Stench to shrink my man meat, however. It was more humiliating than losing to a mulatto to be CEO of the US.
8. Mason C | November 12th, 2012 at 11:20 am
I’m in total agreement about the knockout combination of Deakins/Gassner, but the story was very weak stuff – a tinny plot of ‘whack M’ that led to wasted performances. Bond’s aging added the tension that is the best element of the franchise, but he’s not getting any wiser for it.
‘Necrophilia’ was my reaction after the brisk first half faded away. The final frame threatened “Bond will return,” but a much better script is needed before he does.
9. Eurotrash | November 12th, 2012 at 6:55 pm
Have you ever met a living, breathing Tory, Eileen? Someone called Oliver or Nigel from some dreary village in Buckinghamshire?
Far be it from me to ruin a cherished fantasy, but…
SPOILER ALERT
… they’re pretty far from roaring, fire-breathing, ravishing conquerors. As far as it gets, really. Instead of bestriding the world, grinding down the plucky tribesman-of-choice or striving for the misappropriated Celtic warrior dream (have you ever met a… ahforgetaboutit) they’re usually fat, balding, timid men who like a cup of tea, sweat a lot, live in fear of their wives, in-laws, bosses and the society in general, and might possibly say something peevish behind your back if really pushed.
That’s not to say they’re not poisonous little toads, but your hatred really does them too much credit.
10. gc | November 12th, 2012 at 7:50 pm
@9
Not often that I find myself recommending Hannah Arendt without qualification, but she wrote a book for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
11. Richard Kiel | November 12th, 2012 at 10:15 pm
I can recommend a good orthodontist/steel fabricator.
12. Jim's Neighbor | November 13th, 2012 at 1:01 am
Thanks Eileen. I enjoyed reading your review.
13. John Figler | November 13th, 2012 at 4:12 am
Second best Bond ever!!
14. John Figler | November 13th, 2012 at 4:24 am
Hang Bardem, BTW.
15. Cum | November 13th, 2012 at 6:11 pm
oh look at this horrible thing I stumbled across:
In this video: Where To Open An Offshore Bank Account
INTRO: Offshore Banking: Where You Should You Open Your Offshore Bank Account
Slide 2: Which Countries Should You Open An Offshore Bank Account In?
Cook islands
Lichtenstein (if you are wealthy)
Panama (but only if you speak fluent Spanish)
Austira
Slide 3: In Which Countries Should You Avoid Opening An Offshore Bank Account?
Nevis (slow to respond, poor service)
Switzerland (UBS / IRS fallout)
Isle of Man (courts are friendly to US creditors)
Slide 4: Should You Open An Offshore Bank Account in Canada?
Ok but Canadian courts may be friendly to US judgments (this is a gray area)
http://youtu.be/ERtiveOUExE
16. Zhu Bajie | November 13th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
Best Scottish scene in film history: “Last of the Mohicans,” Magua cutting Col. Munro’s heart out.
17. jyp | November 13th, 2012 at 11:46 pm
#5, above, Mr Brawndo, is spot on. Craig is the best Bond because he’s an ugly little man playing a psychopathic murderer. And and he runs to beat Jesus! Can you even imagine any of the previous James Bonds running? Never mind running to beat Jesus? Of course not. Bunch of lazy English fops poncing around in millionaire sportscars. John Steed without the damned brolly and bankers’ bowler. Craig is perfect for the Brit Intel droid: vicious little haggis bashing oatmeal savage who happily kills anyone he’s told to kill. And generally with a sadistic little smirk and a sneering remark.
By the way, who wrote the review anyway? I can’t keep track of the sockpuppets around here anymore.
18. kool maudit | November 14th, 2012 at 1:58 am
Nice one, Dolan. Good to see England is still getting up your ass. I used to think this was sort of tiresome, but whatever, not enough writers are willing to have a good, solid, consistent prejudice these days. There are few Célines in 2012.
19. MILF Lover | November 14th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Can anyone here hook me up with Dame Judi Dench? I love the smell of tight-arsed, yeasty old women in the morning.
Thank you.
Signed,
MILF Lover
20. radii | November 14th, 2012 at 2:06 pm
The next Bond film needs to be a comedy that lampoons the franchise since it is veering so close to self-parody already … the story can be that good ‘ole Britain has had it with Hollywood making crappy films about their spies and sets out to bring down those responsible … John Cleese plays M, Jim Broadbent plays Q, Joanna Lumley plays Moneypenny, and Daniel Craig gets dumped so that James McAvoy can play a fumbling Bond (a la Sellers) … and the villain can be Jennifer Saunders as a bloated female Blofeld … and in one scene, copying Goldfinger, Bond can listen in on the villain playing poker poolside while in the poolside lounge chairs sit the old, retired previous Bonds: Connery, Moore, Lazenby, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig
21. dis | November 14th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Fuck the Tories, the eternal enemies of everybody else on earth including their own British working class.
22. Jay | November 14th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
This was a perfectly serviceable psychological thriller, but Bond works better as action comedy. The Bond brand was built on exotic locations, nifty gadgets, implausible villains. Bond works best like agent K in Men in Black; acting deadpan serious highlights the insanity.
23. Eurotrash | November 14th, 2012 at 4:20 pm
Pah. Celine’s hatreds aren’t second hand.
24. The Gubbler | November 14th, 2012 at 11:41 pm
Then again. if you just don’t feel like getting a six pack and watching “The World Of Suzie Wong” again…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR1TUXBdYCQ
25. The Gubbler | November 15th, 2012 at 1:50 am
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY GOD DAMNED COMMENT.
Except for number nine and number ten’s clever reply, it was easily the best comment on this crappy thread.
26. The Gubbler | November 15th, 2012 at 2:39 am
I am crazy mad about “The world Of Suzie Wong” and you should be too!!!
27. The Gubbler | November 15th, 2012 at 2:49 am
The Stranglers – In The Shadows
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR4ADUM5PNM
Is it a dog? Is it a cat? Is it Javier? Who gives a shit.
The Stranglers – Enough Time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRNMgpXWWhE
Again… who gives a flying fuck. Just get a fucking six pack and watch “The World Of Suzie Wong”
You will feel much better in the morning.
28. The Gubbler | November 15th, 2012 at 5:22 am
The World Of Fucking Suzie Fucking Wong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C731pk1U1NU
29. The Gubbler | November 15th, 2012 at 5:28 am
We must calm this situation, and end these actions of aggression and bloodshed.
The U.S. isn’t about to take the lead on preventing Operation Cast Lead part two.
That is because of the sad fact that the U.S. sucks so fucking unimaginably bad that it almost makes this piece of shit movie look OK with the help of its piece of shit cinematographer.
30. The Gubbler | November 15th, 2012 at 6:49 am
Seriously folks!!!
31. gc | November 15th, 2012 at 12:34 pm
@18
Nice one, Dolan. Good to see England is still getting up your ass. I used to think this was sort of tiresome, but whatever, not enough writers are willing to have a good, solid, consistent prejudice these days.
^ Fatuous condescension – the best in giving you an excuse not to take other people seriously when they say something you don’t want to hear.
32. Anarchy Pony | November 15th, 2012 at 2:11 pm
17’s comment was fucking hilarious.
33. Cum | November 15th, 2012 at 6:22 pm
Sorry I put this here, I wish we could comment on the side links, but the London Billionaire Bunker article has this perfect metaphor that is also an IRL thing that actually happened:
“This is precisely what happened, to residents’ dismay, in Kensington’s Palace Gardens Terrace this summer, when Goldman Sachs boss Christoph Stanger started digging beneath his £7m property to create a playroom for his children.
After initial excavations, the house began to subside, pulling its neighbours down with it. Cracks appeared within the adjacent basements, and the facades sunk to such an extent that door frames shifted and people were trapped inside.”
34. Heywood Jablowme | November 16th, 2012 at 2:10 am
Make your own Skyfall: Take a dump and don’t flush for 2’23”.
I was bored out of my skull. I hate action movies where people in a room somewhere watch the action on a screen and narrate it: “He’s on the roof!” No shit. And aren’t those reactions our job – the audience? Yes, it was the most digital chase scene in Bond history. Ugh.
A mysterious woman spied through a window in Shanghai appears again in Macau..OK, that’s actually a perfectly good setup for mystery/thriller/spy plots. But then she’s gone in ten minutes. Furthermore, Bond identifies her as having been sexually abused since age 12 then walks into her bathroom naked to fuck her before she disappears from the movie 2 minutes later. There’s good ol’ fashioned womanizing and then there’s just wrong and insulting.
Fanboys: “Oh, but you see, in the novels, the actual Bond is an amoral, misogynistic kill-”
SHUT UP, I’M TALKING
And he escapes the Legend of FuManchu goons by hitting them on with a briefcase and watching them get dragged away by Komodo dragons. Is this still the gritty, “realistic” Bond or was I supposed to laugh? At least in Jabba’s palace the people above were enjoying themselves.
Fanboys: “Yes, but remember all those other hokey Bond moments in Bond histor-”
THOSE SUCKED TOO.
Then, captured by Javier Bardem portraying Stewie from Family Guy, Bond escapes by grabbing guns by the barrel and twirling..Zzzzzzzz….
The gratuitous inclusion of Aston Martin just reminded me of better films. Was Sam Mendes haunted by the floating head of George Lucas looping the line, “It’s like poetry; it rhymes.”
Meanwhile, at Bond Manor…
At the end of Quantum of Solace we should have seen the words: “James Bond will return in Home Alone in the Highlands. Booby trapped floorboards but, what, no swinging five gallon paint cans to the face?
Bond’s family estate is overlooked by a bumbling yet homicidal Santa Claus…WHAT IS THIS PILE OF SHIT???
And finally the old anteroom/M office set is back. Just what you were asking, right? At least they didn’t explicitly set up a sequel by naming a villain “on the loose”.
“007, your mission is to find out everything you can about this new arms dealer, Fondel Balzac.”
35. Andrew | November 16th, 2012 at 5:31 am
I think you mean Revolutionary Road and Road to Perdition.
36. Cum | November 16th, 2012 at 11:39 pm
I finally saw the movie. You know how all the movie and videogame posters in the last decade use that blue/orange extreme contrast color scheme? Half the scenes in the movie look like that.
37. Rybkovich | November 19th, 2012 at 9:26 am
I think the Scotland incorporation is cool cause i see it as mainly a reference to Connery being Scottish and in a way fits with the starting at the begging theme. Whats uncool is me thinking of looper (horrible) just now.
38. Ernst Stavro Blofeld | November 20th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
@19: See Joe Mengele’s compassionate comment #10 in http://exiledonline.com/letter-from-los-angeles-election-night-yeast-infection-nightmares/
The jury is out on Trifungol, while JP4 and NaHCO3 may irritate Dame Judi’s sensitive tissues.
39. Toba | November 20th, 2012 at 6:44 pm
Nice try with the review and the painful “spoiler alerts” but I think the box office has spoken. Time to kill off Bond for good. The franchise has outlived it’s usefulness. Again, nice try with the seemingly desperate and long winded review but it is futile. The only thing left is to be ridiculous and that would be making Bond ” other than “white” or a woman hahahaha.I am amused because I think those jackasses will try anything to keep that corpse of a franchise alive hahahaha ha……BTW, does the reviewer have stock in the franchise ? because I most certainly felt as if I was being “blown” as a incentive to plunk down my ill gotten gains for the tickets even thought it wouldn’t be even a bootleg copy………. Hahahaha. FUCK Bond! It’s over !….
40. Tyrone Chocolate Thunder Dupree | November 20th, 2012 at 11:29 pm
Bond’s future should be black. Bring back William Marshall, Mamuwalde in Blacula. Dude sucked some serious arterial shit in L.A. And get M.C. Hammer as Renfield. If Vonetta McGee is N/A (rumored dead, 2010), find a Thai lookalike, preferably one with tats and full-body piercings. Throw them all in a blender and let ’em take on the Victorville Vegan Conspiracy.
41. CensusLouie | November 22nd, 2012 at 8:25 pm
I have no qualms about claiming that Goldeneye was the height of the Bond franchise.
All you have to do for an accurate movie review these days is to hop on imdb and look at the writers.
Skyfall writers? FOUR of them (anything over 2 is a bad sign) whose credits include nothing but the shitty Brosnan films (every one but Goldeneye) and BOTH JOHNNY ENGLISH MOVIES. Johnny fucking English. Nothing quality can come of these people.
Casino Royale? Boring tripe that successfully duped people by going “dark”, which is a long tested tactic in tricking stupid people into think your material is more mature. The funny thing is the opening and villain to still campy Goldeneye managed to have more emotional impact than all of the Craig movies DESPERATELY trying to be the Bourne movies.
Aside from the terrible writing, the problem with the Craig movies is the boring action. They have no idea what makes an exciting action scene. Each of them opens with a 10 minute long chase scene where we the audience know nothing of the characters, the situation, or what’s at stake. An action scene is pointless filler without that. I actually yawned and fast forwarded through the parkour chase scene in Casino Royale and the car chase in Quantum.
Let us not get started on Casino’s basing a climax on a poker scene (Texas Hold’em at a high class European casino, ha ha sure) with an idiot’s understanding of poker.
42. Toba | November 23rd, 2012 at 7:30 pm
Hahaha on point! The thing that really gets me with Craig is that his physical features are too Russian rather than British! It doesn’t work! Not to mention those sickening colonials types with their pretentious accents. Beaten by a vampire movie sums it all up.Bond should really die.
43. wengler | November 25th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
The problem with Skyfall is that the villain is too damn convincing. He turned the lemons that MI6 gave him when they betrayed him into lemonade by waging war against the obviously leaky state security agency.
M signed his death warrant when he ‘went to far in hacking China’. I mean really. What the fuck? Just assign him a different MOS or send him to the island where spies go when they know too much.
44. James Nowlan | November 27th, 2012 at 10:14 am
I’ve always wanted to be a Bond supervillain or maybe Doctor Doom or Capitain Ahab. I guess that’s something shameful to admit, like coming out of the closet would have been fifty years ago. Being megalomainiac I think of myself as the one who brought the power of the Mexican wrestling mask to the light skinned people. But
Pussy Power probably discovered anyway. I’ll admit to something even worse. While working at some Brit run boiler room call center I wore the Mexican wrestling mask to the office Christmas party. They forced me to take off my wrestling mask. what shame. Anyone who wants to be a true wearer of the Mexican wrestling will fight to death before allowing
his mask to be ripped from his face.I took off my because pervitin loving CHAVs with deluded fantasies of becoming East European Biznezmeny ask me to because it was scaring people. Of course it should scare American liberal arts grads who want to have a Kultural experience and wear dread locks and
Ché Guevara t shirts. The wearing of the Mexican wrestling mask is a powerful thing that they can never understand. If the occupy wall streeters had worn the Mexican wrestling mask America their revolution would have changed our nation. And by now I would have been called back from my exile to be the Emperor of a revived republic before whom the whole world would tremble.
45. Araon Rogers | November 29th, 2012 at 9:55 am
“It has becomes very difficult week in and week out to have to bend over and take it up the wazoo without Vaseline for my esteemed Senator, Paul Ryan. Hence, I am retiring from the pseudo-socialist Green Bay FudgePackers in order to replace Gay-Boy Craig as 007 in the next Bond film, “The Quarterback Who Can’t Beat Eli'” co-starring Tom Brady. Though it will be difficult to trade in my esteemed number 12 for 007, at least I’ll finally get to sleep with a woman, not an AynSwine Rand worshipping cheese-dicked failure.”
—A. Rogers
46. The Gubbler | December 2nd, 2012 at 7:17 am
i am obsessed with dolan!!!
47. The Gubbler | December 2nd, 2012 at 7:19 am
Hey Dolan… I am a stalker who follows you
48. The Gubbler | December 2nd, 2012 at 7:20 am
why am i such a weird dolan stalker? don’t i have a life?
49. The Gubbler | December 2nd, 2012 at 7:25 am
Hey Dolan, I care who you are
I post comments
I hate myself and I wish I was you
50. The Gubbler | December 2nd, 2012 at 7:44 am
I should probably get back on my meds
51. franc black | December 4th, 2012 at 8:18 pm
Accurate review.
The opening was pretty captivating, and the theme song visuals were ‘old school’ Bond at its best.
Shanghai great, Macau great, that abandoned Chinese island great, London sewers great … but the story tanks as soon as that hot brunette gets shot. Javier “Candy” Bardem is not very convincing…they made him too powerful, though his henchmen drop like flies in a fight. All that trouble to save ‘M’ but then she dies of a cut hand and they don’t administer any first aid when she goes into shock.
Good movie, could have been much better if the second half were re-worked.
52. The Gubbler | December 7th, 2012 at 2:28 am
“Heat” with Burt ‘The Gubbler’ Reynolds pt 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw9ipH02g2o
That’s you Dolan. You’re Ozgood. I’m Burt Reynolds.
aHH hahaha!!!
Didn’t see that one coming, did you Dolan???
53. The Gubbler | December 7th, 2012 at 2:45 am
No it’s not over yet Dolan. You still have to watch me take my meds…. and won’t you be suprised Dolan, when you continue to watch the rest of the clip.
Remember I’m Burt Reynolds, you’re Ozgood.
“Heat” pt 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwCiA2zS23c
aHH HAHAHA!!!
Who’s on top now Dolan??? That’s right, Burt ‘The Gubbler’ Reynolds.
See you… hate to be you.
54. The Gubbler | December 7th, 2012 at 7:57 am
The Stranglers – Golden Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWAsI3U2EaE
55. T,B, | December 17th, 2012 at 9:59 am
Eerie villian. Intense action. Cool cars. Hot women. Decent screenplay. Excellent cinematography. Four out of five bungholes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H2VLCkoZKY
56. Plamen Petkov | December 18th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
“irritated blonde ape in his tuxedo”
Classic, pure classic. Describes Daniel Craig as 007 to a T. Eileen you are perfect.
57. The Gubbler | May 4th, 2013 at 12:04 am
This country is a piece of shit thanks for deleting my context assholes.
58. Andrew | October 17th, 2013 at 9:20 pm
I got tired of scrolling through the comments to see if anyone noticed that Javier Bardem was playing Julian Assange. That’s the threat to US/UK neoliberalism black ops. Get it?
Maybe some of the NYT type critics got it.
So if you’re shitting your pants about Jullian Assange and Judi Dench can convince you that the hackers are the threat to the British Empire, you loved this movie.
They totally called Edward Snowden! And thank god the Scots are going to prop all this up for us, cheers bros.
59. The Gubbler | February 6th, 2014 at 11:26 am
Thanks for listening
60. Mark | September 2nd, 2014 at 11:25 pm
really terrible movie. But hey, I came fore the Limonka.
Fuck, I wish I was young, you guys are having a great time. Limonov is older than me and he’s having fun…………