SKYFALL Review

Having never been a huge Bond fan for most of my life, my interest in the franchise was peaked when director Martin Campbell delivered a hard boiled, gritty action film with the suave, iconic agent at the head of the film. Embodied by the newly minted Daniel Craig, for the first time I felt as if I was watching a man who could actually take part in a secret government agency and come out on the other side alive rather than seeing Pierce Brosnan as a version of some high class socialite who wondered into a gunfight, some off kilter version of the character Mike Myers so easily lampooned. Granted, I haven't seen many of the films in the franchise (though I certainly plan on doing so at some point) I've seen plenty of footage and clips from the older films when I prepped to see Casino Royale as a newbie to the franchise. I have caught a few of the Brosnan era Bonds on TV as well as seeing Die Another Day as my first in a theater which as you can imagine, wasn't the greatest introduction. A year after experiencing Chris Nolan's dark, realistic take on the Batman story it was interesting to have seen Bond go the same way within his own world. With the twenty-third film of the franchise, Skyfall, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have recruited Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition) to helm this latest installment that acts as a continuation of Craig's time in MI6 but also reestablishes much of the series history and lays the ground work for much to be excited about in what is coming in Mr. Bond's near future.