Dr. No was the first 007 film produced by EON Productions. Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the death of MI6 agent John Strangways. He finds his way to Crab Key island, where the mysterious Dr. No awaits.
The original Bond movie, and still a good one. It introduces many of the elements that would become classic Bond - the man himself, the villain who is somehow odd and different from normal, and who resides in some fantastical base, the attempts to kill Bond in weird and impractical ways, the Bond Girl for Bond to have some R&R with, the exotic locations... it's all here.
And it all works pretty well, it has to be said. This is good solid entertainment. Though to modern eyes, Dr. No himself may be hard to take seriously after the Austin Powers Doctor Evil parody!
From Russia With Love
When MI6 gets a chance to get their hands on a Lektor decoder, Bond is sent to Turkey to seduce the beautiful Tatiana, and bring back the machine. With the help of Kerim Bey, Bond escapes on the Orient Express, but might not make it off alive.
The second outing was a bit of a let-down for me. It's overly long, and the plot Maguffin isn't all that compelling. Still, Conner is good as Bond and there are some enjoyable elements that sustain interest. Robert Shaw is especially good as the bad guy - clearly insane, but also convincingly dangerous!
Goldfinger
The Bank of England has detected an unauthorized leakage of gold from the country, and Bond is sent to investigate. The suspect is one Auric Goldfinger, the richest man in the country. Bond catches Goldfinger cheating at cards, with the assistance of Tilly Masterson, who is killed and painted gold in revenge. Bond must foil his plots, while avoiding the deadly Korean, Oddjob.
The third outing is one of the high points of the whole Bond franchise. What's not to like? The plot is clear and comprehensible, and actually quite clever. The pacing is good, and Auric Goldfinger makes a memorable villain. Just as good is Oddjob, one of the classic Bond villains. Throw in the best Bond theme song ever done, and you have a movie that just works on ever level.
Thunderball
Emilio Largo, the Number 2 at SPECTRE, has stolen two nuclear warheads. He threatens to destroy a city in the United States and England unless a large ransom is paid. Bond is sent to the Bahamas to investigate.
A decent outing for Bond, Thunderball puts a nice spin on things by putting a lot of the action underwater. That made for a challenging film to make, and it looks great on screen. On the downside though, the underwater scenes do stretch on somewhat too long, leaving the film lacking pace.
You Only Live Twice
Ernst Stavro Blofeld is hijacking American and Russian space shuttles, in an attempt to start a war between the two nations. Bond is sent to Japan to investigate, with the help of Tiger Tanaka, the head of station in Tokyo. Armed with over 100 trained ninjas, Bond infiltrates Blofeld's volcano lair.
One of the all time classic Bond movies, You Only Live Twice moves a lot of the action to Japan. It gives the film an exotic feel and provides a lot of nice culture clash moments. The film also has one of the classic Bond elements, the villain's lair. Previous Bond movies have toyed with this idea - Dr. No's island comes to mind - but this really took that concept and ran with it. And even now, the idea of a villain living in a "hollowed out volcano" resonates in our culture.
The idea of a predatory spaceship is another "wow" moment, ridiculous on it's face but done well enough that you accept it.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Bond rescues the suicidal Tracy Di Vicenzo, and is brought at gunpoint to meet her father, Marc-Ange Draco, the head of one of the largest criminal organization in Europe. Draco strikes a deal with Bond, agreeing to reveal the location of Blofeld, if Bond will look after his daughter.
After the first four Bond movies Sean Connery was getting fed up with playing the role, given the amount of time he had to devote to filming each one and then doing publicity tours for them. He was also worried about being typecast. and his relationship with producer Albert Broccoli was at breaking point. Nevertheless he signed on to do one more, You Only Live Twice. But he informed Broccoli that the film would be his last.
So when On Her Majesty's Secret Service came around, they needed a new Bond. Roger Moore was touted, but he was busy producing his TV series The Saint. Several others were considered, but in the end George Lazenby got the part and filmed his one and only Bond movie.
He tried to update the character, putting him into very sixties fashions. Ironically this makes him look dated to modern eyes, whereas the standard suits that Connery had worn wouldn't look much out of place today. Most reviewers at the time were critical of his Bond and amongst the audience he was quite a divisive figure, with fans either loving him or loathing him ever since. I find him a little flippant in the role; Connery always had a witty comment to hand, but he also had a hard edge under the humour.
Blofeld is back, this time depicted by Telly Savalas. He's good in the role, though his quest to be recognised as the heir to some aristocrat lineage is a little weird and petty. The mountain locations give us a snow theme for this one - and much as Thunderball's underwater scenes dragged on a bit, the many variations of snow sports we get in this film do grow a little tedious.
Diamonds Are Forever
Sean Connery is back for a fast paced hunt through a diamond smuggling pipeline. MI6 arrests small time smuggler Peter Franks, and Bond takes his place, meeting courier Tiffany Case. He follow the trail of the diamonds, as everyone who touches them gets killed. The end of the pipeline is Blofeld, with another plan for World Domination.
Lazenby's agent convinced him that secret agents saving the world was going to look terribly old fashioned as the 1970s rolled around, so he decided that he would call it a day at one Bond movie. Adam West was considered as a replacement, but the head of the studio informed the producers that Connery was to be enticed back, with money no object. Connery stiffed them for £1.25 million (some $35 million in today's money!) and the studio backing of two films of his choice. And hence we get Diamonds are Forever.
Reviews of the film were mixed, and it is rather a mixed bag. The plot is needlessly complex and a little too camp, Jill St. John isn't a great Bond Girl, and the gay assassins just aren't ever threatening.
Live and Let Die
Several British agents are killed in a short period of time, during routine surveillance of dictator Dr. Kananga. Bond is sent to New York to investigate, and falls into a trap of gangster Mr. Big, thanks to his psychic tarot card reader, Solitaire.
After Diamonds are Forever Connery decided he'd had enough Bond and refused to do another one no matter what they offered him (an attitude that didn't last forever!). The producers tried for Clint Eastwood, who was fresh from his success with Dirty Harry, but he felt that he wasn’t right for the role. Many American actors were considered, to give Bond appeal in the US cinema market, but in the end they settled on Roger Moore. He had been considered previously, but was now free of TV commitments and happy to take the role.
And he's pretty good in it, too. Live and Let Die is generally a good film, with engaging action sequences and a decent story. The theme tune is pretty great, as well. There are a few missteps, though. To modern eyes the film comes across as kind of racist - though to be fair that's in line with Fleming's books, which were often pretty racist, sexist, and probably a few other -ists as well. There are also a few truly silly moments, including the one in which the villain is killed when he literally bursts after swallowing a gas bullet.
All in all, a mixed bag.
The Man With The Golden Gun
MI6 is sent a golden bullet with 007 engraved onto it. M fears that Bond will be assassinated by Francesco Scaramanga, the $1 million a shot hit-man, known for his golden gun, and sends Bond to find him first.
Pretty decent effort overall, this. It benefits greatly from the presence of Christopher Lee as the bad guy, whose crack shot Scaramanga is convincingly ruthless - although it comes off as a little silly that he chooses to play games with Bond rather than simply taking him on directly. But that's a fault of many of the Bond films, and yet another aspect mercilessly parodied in the Austin Powers series. The Maguffin of a solar power technology is enough of a hook to keep the proceedings going, although it's a bit silly that the solar power station blows itself up just because somebody falls into a coolant tank. Who knew that solar power was so very dangerous?
The Spy Who Loved Me
British and Russian submarines have been hijacked, and the two countries come together, sending 007 and Russian Agent Anya Amasova to track down a stolen microfilm and investigate. The tension rises as Amasova discovers that Bond had killed her lover in the course of duty. Bond needs to get Amasova on his side as a life insurance policy against her threat to kill him when their mission is over.
The Spy Who Loved me is one of the more preposterous of the Bond movies - a trend that blossomed under Roger Moore - but for all that it's a fun romp. We have a suitably megalomaniac bad guy, this time obsessed with creating a new Human civilisation beneath the sea whilst life on land is destroyed. To this end his converted supertanker has stolen two nuclear missile submarines, one British and one Russian. This puts Bond in the position of working with a beautiful and deadly Russian agent, which is an interesting and novel spin on the proceedings. Seeing Bond and Amasova compete is fun, as is having the formidable Jaws after them through much of the movie. The finale is a big battle on board the tanker, which is well staged and suitably thrilling. One of Moore's better efforts.
Moonraker
A space shuttle, on loan to MI6 by Hugo Drax, is hijacked in mid-air. Bond is sent to investigate Drax, on the pretence of an official apology. Bond discovers that Drax hijacked the shuttle himself, and stumbles upon a secret lab with fatal poisons. Drax plans to create a space colony and commit a global genocide, to regenerate a perfect species.
Moonraker is infamous for taking the Bond staple of the villain who wants to destroy the world from his secret base and ramps the whole thing up waaaay past eleven! Yes, Hugo Drax doesn't have any silly old volcano lair or floating supertanker - he has an invisible space station!
The producers had seen the huge box office success of the recent Star Wars release and decided that Bond needed to go all sci-fi to cash in. Hence we have space shuttles galore and space marines fighting space battles with space lasers - and did I mention it was in space?
It's absurdly over the top, but if you're willing to just accept that and roll with it, it's all good fun and well worth watching.
For Your Eyes Only
A ship containing an Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator (ATAC), which can control ballistic missile attacks, is sunk. Bond is sent to retrieve the ATAC before the Russians do. MI6 had sent archaeologist Timothy Havelock to discretely locate the ship, but he and his wife were murdered in front of their daughter Melina. Bond tracks down their killer, Hector Gonzales, and must complete his work before Melina takes her revenge.
One of Roger Moore's lesser efforts, this one scales back on the silliness factor massively as compared to the previous outing. In truth, it probably scales back a bit too much, because what we're left with is kind of dull and plodding in comparison to the last two movies. It's not a bad film, especially, but it's just kind of a let-down.
Octopussy
Agent 009 is stabbed and crashes through a window of the British Embassy in Berlin, holding a forged Fabergé egg. Bond is sent to investigate, and begins at the Southerby's auction for the real Fabergé counterpart. 007 is lead to India, finding corrupt Prince Kamal Khan and his beautiful associate Octopussy.
How can you not love a film called "Octopussy"? The usual Bond elements combine here, with guns, girls and gadgets galore. The driving force is a crazed Russian general who wants to detonate a nuclear bomb in Berlin and claim it as an accidental detonation of a western nuclear weapon. He hopes this will force the west to pull their nuclear weapons out of Europe, opening up the way for a Russian invasion. The plot is rather complex and can be a bit hard to follow, but it all moves along well enough and keeps you interested.
Never Say Never Again
SPECTRE agents under the command of Ernst Blofeld infiltrate a US air force base situated in the UK and steal two Tomahawk cruise missiles. When NATO is held to ransom, the British reactive their "00" agents and send James Bond to recapture the warheads and kill Blofeld.
Never Say never Again has it's roots in the controversy surrounding the novel Thunderball. Most Bond movies are adapted from pre-existing novels or stories, often taking very little from the books in the process. For Thunderball, Fleming had started by writing a script specifically for a movie. He worked in collaboration with Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham, who contributed various original ideas. The movie fell through as it would be too expensive to shoot, so Fleming reworked the script into the novel Thunderball. This was then picked up to make the movie of the same name. McClory sued Fleming, eventually settling out of court. This settlement gave him the right to develop a Bond project based on the aspects of the story he had contributed. Eon Productions did a deal with McClory, letting him produce the Thunderball movie with the understanding that he would not develop his own project for ten years afterwards.
After a couple of attempts, McClory finally took his version of Thunderball to the screen under the title Never Say Never Again. Connery agreed to come back, with his original pledge never to play Bond again prompting the change of title from Thunderball to Never Say Never Again.
Whew! Confused? I certainly am!
What all this means is that we got a Bond movie that isn't quite a Bond movie. Many of the classic elements are altered or missing - no 'gun barrel' introduction, new actors for M and Moneypenny, etc.
So is it any good? Well, it's okay. Frankly Connery is a little old to be running around shooting people by now, and although the movie does take this on board and make references to his age, it never quite pulls off the idea of a past-it Bond.
Where it scores is in the bad guy, who is a bad girl this time - Fatima Blush. She's an evil, sexy, sadistic, dominating woman. What's not to love?!
Never Say Never Again came out only a few months after Octopussy, and much media fuss was made of "Bond v Bond" at the time. Whilst Connery is often voted the definitive Bond, in box office terms Octopussy won comfortably.
A View to a Kill
Bond investigates a drugged horse racing scandal, and is led to Max Zorin, an eccentric industrialist who plans to destroy Silicon Valley, so that he can create a monopoly on microchip technologies. The chase leads Bond to the Eiffel Tower, and a Blimp ride that eclipses in a tense climax atop the Golden Gate Bridge.
Another Bond outing for Roger Moore, this time battling Christopher Walken's evil scheme to destroy Silicon Valley and thus gain a world monopoly on microchip manufacture. Walken, as Max Zorin, is the product of a Nazi scheme to produce a perfect Aryan, and is thus distinctly Nazi-esque in outlook. Moore himself criticised the level of violence in the film, especially the scene where Zorin machine-guns a crowd of helpless workers. By modern standards the violence isn't all that bad, but it is a step above the usual Bond stuff in that respect. Moore also commented that he was far too old to be really convincing as Bond now, and I have to say I agree with that.
Putting Grace Jones in is also something of a misstep. She was enjoying a lot of popularity at the time, largely because nobody could quite work out what to make of her. You can see that in the film, too, where she starts off as a baddie but then flips in the final act to help Bond save the day after Zorin tries to kill her for no particular reason. Clearly the movie wanted to play into her image as a tough, athletic, somewhat intimidating and slightly psycho image (she once attacked a talk show host in the UK for turning away from her as she spoke). Yet it also clearly didn't want to just kill her off - and certainly having Bond kill a woman is always something the movies have been reluctant to do.
In the end the whole thing is a bit of a let-down, and the Bond franchise was looking a bit tired by now. Time for a change.
The Living Daylights
Bond is assigned to protect Georgi Koskov, an ex-KGB officer who is defecting to the British. Koskov is to escape during the intermission at the Bratislava concert hall, and must be protected from a KGB sniper. Bond sets up across the street, but decides against assassinating the sniper, when he realizes she is an amateur women.
With Roger Moore stepping down, producers settled on Timothy Dalton for their new Bond. Thus, Bond was reinvented for the new age. Dalton was keen to bring a certain realism to the franchise, and he certainly did manage that. Rather than have fantastical tales of world-destroying bad guys, Bond is getting involved in the Afghanistan war, drug dealing and arms dealing.
If anything, though, he went a bit too far. Dalton's Bond is a serious guy, but he's serious to the extent that he virtually never so much as smiles during his movies. His movies are grim, violent, sometimes bloody affairs. The action is good here, the settings are good, but all in all it's just a bit dour.
Licence to Kill
Bond and Felix Leiter catch drug lord Franz Sanchez during a raid in Miami, but Sanchez escapes after bribing DEA agent Ed killifer. Sanchez kills and rapes Leiter's wife, and Leiter is fed to a shark, losing a leg. Bond must infiltrate and destroy Sanchez's operation, and avenge the death of Leiter's wife.
Dalton's first film was a serious affair, but in the second they really went all-out. We get a bad guy who is a murdering psychopath with an even more psychotic side-kick. Within the first act they kill Bond's friend Felix Leiter in a particularly brutal way, after first raping his new bride in front of him. Yeah, brutal it is and brutal it remains.
Refused permission to go after Sanchez, Bond quits to pursue a personal vendetta. With the help of Q and a couple of lovely Ladies, he works his way into Sanchez's organisation and brings it down. Along the way there's a lot of death, a lot of explosions, and a lot of chases. The truck chase is a particularly well staged sequence, I thought!
Probably the better of the two Dalton films, but not all that well received at the time. Well, there's always another Bond...
Goldeneye
Xenia Onatopp and Colonel Ourumov hijack a special helicopter that is immune to electromagnetic pulse. The pair then go to a soviet bunker that is the control base for the Goldeneye satellite weapons. They kill the staff and destroy the base with an electromagnetic pulse from one of the satellites, themselves protected by the helicopter. Bond must investigate the attack.
Goldeneye marked a reinvention of the Bond franchise, with Pierce Brosnan moving into the role. He had been considered for Bond before Dalton, but a convoluted series of events prevented him taking it. At the time he was working on a series called Remmington Steele. The show was fading in the ratings and due to be cancelled - but when word circulated that Brosnan was up for Bond, viewers came back in droves to take a look at him. As a result the cancellation was cancelled, and the producers told Dalton he would be held to his contract to do another season. Ironically, after Dalton was then cast as Bond viewership declined once more and the show never did get that extra season.
But now he had his chance, and a great job he did with it. Brosnan's Bond strikes a great balance - he has that hard edge that Dalton's Bond had, but he also has a little of Moore's levity and silliness to lighten the mood. There's some hardcore realism here - the film makes use of real world elements such as the European Tiger attack helicopter, a French warship, Russian tanks - but it's also willing to be a little over the top, with that Russian tank engaging in a massively destructive and massively entertaining chase through the streets of Moscow. There's even a hidden lair for the bad guys!
All in all Goldeneye is one of my favourite Bond films, and well worth watching!
Tomorrow Never Dies
Media mogul Elliot Carver plans to use a stolen encoder to start a war between China and the United Kingdom, and boost ratings for his cable networks. Carver's wife Paris is an ex-girlfriend of Bond's, and her assistance costs her her life. Bond must fight Carver with the help of Chinese spy Wai Lin.
Brosnan's second outing suffer somewhat in comparison to the first. Jonathan Pryce's bad guy Elliot Carver is obviously meant to be a bit topical - somebody thought "what if there was a media mogul like Rupert Murdoch who was evil?" Well, okay, they probably thought "what if there was a media mogul like Rupert Murdoch who was even more evil?", but you get the gist. Unfortunately Carver is just too obviously nutty to take seriously, and this harms the film.
In the Bond Girl department we get Teri Hatcher as Carver's wife, and an old flame of Bond's. She's good, but she only has a couple of scenes. For the most part we get Wai Lin as Bond's Chinese counterpart, involved because Carver's plan is to provoke a war between the UK and China. The action set-pieces are okay, but the whole thing is just too silly to take seriously.
The World is Not Enough
Renard, a terrorist who feels no pain, and is slowly dying due to a bullet lodged in his brain, assassinates billionaire Robert King. Bond is assigned to protect his daughter, Electra King, and must fight Renard with the help of Valentin Zukovsky and Christmas Jones.
Brosnan's third outing is better than the previous one, though still not as good as Goldeneye. The most interesting aspect here is that they decide to make Bond quite vulnerable. After a prolonged opening sequence involving a boat chase on the Thames River, Bond's shoulder is injured throughout the rest of the film. He hides this from his boss, but it gives Bond a new angle that's interesting to see. Especially so as it's contrasted with the villain, who thanks to a brain injury is unable to feel pain or exhaustion. As a doctor says, "eventually it will kill him, but he will become stronger and more unstoppable every day until the day he dies."
The plot is rather complex and long-winded, but it carries the film along well enough. One major misstep is Denise Richards as nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones. She's simply not credible in the role, though to be fair she does give it her all.
All in all worth watching, but not great.
Die Another Day
Bond is betrayed during a mission in North Korea, and is captured and tortured for 14 months. After revealing nothing, Bond is released in a deal with MI6, who release a terrorist in return. Bond escapes from MI6 to find the traitor, and kill the terrorist he was traded for.
This one starts out as a pretty decent entry in the franchise. It continues the trend of using real settings by putting Bond on a mission in to North Korea, trying to stop a weapons for diamonds deal being run by Tan-Sun Moon and his lackey Zao. But then it twists that by having Bond succeed in his mission but be captured in the process. He endures 14 months of torture before being traded for Zao. Turns out somebody was leaking information to the Koreans and his bosses, thinking Bond had cracked, traded him to stop the leak.
Bond sets out to clear his name and recapture Zao. Soon he's dealing with tycoon Gustav Graves, beautiful CIA agent Giacinta 'Jinx' Johnson, giant space mirrors, hotels made of ice, invisible cars... you get the idea.
There are some really good elements here, mostly in the first half of the film. Bond's sword fight with Graves is great, Jinx is a fun character, the ice hotel is a nice setting. But it all gets a bit silly with the giant space mirror, which turns out to be an invincible orbital weapon. Some of the special effects are anything but special, especially when the mirror is used to attack Bond. Still, the climax is satisfying enough, and it does at least hold the interest.
Casino Royale
In a reboot of the series, Casino Royale opens with Bond gaining his 00 status, by killing two enemy agents, and earning his license to kill. Bond must win a high stakes poker game against terrorist financier Le Chiffre, to bankrupt him so that he will be murdered by his bankers.
Well, time to re-invent the Bond franchise once again. Does it work? Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes, it does.
Casino Royale is the best Bond movie ever made. Largely that's down to Daniel Craig and the way the script handles him. For the first time, the films explore the kind of person Bond would actually be. Bear in mind that when you get right down to it, this guy is a professional killer. Craig's Bond is ruthless, cold, calculating, determined as all hell... and murderous. It's not that killing doesn't affect him - we see him do it and we see him with the shakes afterwards as he goes through a stress reaction. It's just that he's okay with living with those effects. And he's perfectly prepared to use, abuse, and discard anybody he needs to in order to complete his mission.
The mission is also an interesting one. The climax of the film is... a bunch of guys playing a poker game. But you're engrossed in it anyway, because you see one of the players is Le Chiffre, a shady banker who specialises in holding money for terrorists and warlords. Le Chiffre has info on half the bad guys in the world, and when Bond foils a plan he has to manipulate the stock market he finds himself a hundred million dollars in the hole. As he's an expert card player, he plans to win the money back in the high stakes poker game. Bond, a great player himself, is sent in to make sure that Le Chiffre's fat remains in the fire. If this gambit fails Le Chiffe will have no choice but to ask MI-6 for asylum, and the price will be all that precious information.
Thus we have Bond simultaneously trying to beat Le Chiffre at the tables, whilst protecting him from the bad guys coming after him between hands. And all to get the bad guy on their side, rather than trying to kill him. Le Chiffre himself comes across as a desperate and a little pathetic - by the last act he's not engaged in any evil plan at all, let alone trying to destroy the world or anything. You can almost feel sorry for the guy, but frankly he's just so much fun to hate.
Kudos also goes out for the opening sequence, where Bond pursues a bomb maker in a foot chase. That description barely does this scene justice, as they run through building sites, up a crane and down again, through walls, you name it. The bad guy is incredibly fast and nimble, able to jump over or under almost any obstacle whilst Bond either thinks or simply smashes his way through. It's a stunning sequence, so completely believable and relentlessly physical that it's honestly exhausting to even watch it. By the end you are left in no doubt that Bond is a superbly capable and dangerous man... and yet, also a rather rash and impulsive one, prone to action without quite thinking things through.
That's something Judy Dench's superb M is more than happy to point out to him. You get that she likes Bond, you get that she sees his potential, but she's also repeatedly frustrated with his take-no-prisoners attitude. She needs him to grow up a little, and by the end of the film he does.
Eva Green also makes a great Bond Girl as Vesper Lynd, one who is a match for Bond intellectually as well as being simply gorgeous. They trade barbs throughout, and Vesper comes off the better of them most of the time.
All in all, simply a fantastic movie. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Quantum of Solace
In a continuation from Casino Royale, Bond is set to eliminate Dominic Green, a wealthy business man who is trying to control the water supply of Bolivia to extort it's government. He also seeks to avenge the death of Vesper Lynd.
Unfortunately, Quantum of Solace was beset with production problems. Primarily, the rough draft script was finished just a few days before a writer's strike started. This meant that they had to shoot the film from an unfinished script, with director Marc Foster and Daniel Craig himself often sitting up through the night to rewrite scenes before filming them the next day. Given that, it's remarkable that the whole thing works as well as it does.
The main bad guys are the Quantum organisation, a kind of association of wealthy and powerful people who use dirty tricks to gain economic advantage in deprived areas. They're planning to support a coup in a south American country in order to get the mineral rights from the new dictator. Secretly, they plan to use this to control all the water sources in the country, giving themselves an incredibly profitable monopoly.
It's an obvious environmentalist anti-corporate message... a little too obvious, really. It does suffer from the heavy handedness. The action also suffers from too-rapid camera cuts and shakey-cam, especially in the first act. As far as Bong Girls are concerned, there's not a whole lot on offer here either. Gemma Arterton is fun as Strawberry Fields, but she's only there for a couple of scenes. Olga Kurylenko's as Camille Montes is the main attraction, and she's just kind of bland and dull.
All in all, not a terrible film but a big step down.
Oh, and by the way... kudos to this film for being one of the very, very few pop culture sources to use the word "quantum" correctly. In case you don't know, a "quantum" jump is not, as it is often depicted, a massive, revolutionary, game-changing jump - rather it's the smallest possible change from the status quo. Here Bond is out for revenge against those who killed Vesper Lynd in the last film. But his revenge will prove to be a "quantum of solace" indeed.
Skyfall
Bond 24, Skyfall, was released on October 26th, 2012, with the London première on October 23rd. James Bond's loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to haunt her. As MI6 itself comes under attack, Bond must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost.
Daniel Craig's third outing as Bond also suffered a troubled production, with the film suspended throughout 2010 as MGM encountered financial difficulties. One might have expected this to result in a disjointed, poorly made movie. But nope. Skyfall hits it out of the park, and how.
Primarily, this is a film in which we see Bond suffering and struggling in a way he really hasn't. In that respect it harks back to Brosnan's The World Is Not Enough - Bond here is in poor physical condition after nearly being killed on a mission, his skills rusty through disuse. He comes back into action when a mysterious terrorist targets MI-6 and M specifically, but it really does seem like he doesn't have a lot to offer to the mission. Nevertheless, M throws him out there.
Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva is a truly excellent bad guy, somebody as smart and capable as Bond - or perhaps more so, given Bond's condition. He plays against Bond with a vaguely homoerotic undertone (it actually becomes an explicit overtone at least once), which is genuinely unsettling. And it's even more interesting because Silva has a genuine legitimate gripe against M, who sold him out to the Chinese when he became too troublesome. The theme of the film is being haunted by your past and the terrible things you've had to do, and both Bond, M and Silva play into that theme perfectly.
The third act is also a wonderful storytelling choice. We're so used to Bond jetting off to exotic locations with a briefcase full of gadgets... but the film shows us that he simply can't compete with Silva on that basis, and every time he tries it goes badly for him. So he and M take off for Scotland, holding up in the house Bond grew up in with a shotgun and a couple of improvised weapons. It's a small, quiet, local setting - and as such it makes a great contrast to what's gone before and plays perfectly into the theme of the past catching up with you. We come to realise that Bond has been running for most of his life, and it's finally time for the running to stop.
