Last night, thanks to the willingness of a certain visiting Grandmother to babysit, the Better Half and I went to our first movie since the arrival of the Squirrel. I am a massive James Bond fan, and we’d heard good things about “Skyfall,” so off we went.
And here comes the obligatory SPOILER ALERT!! Henceforth I will be discussing plot details and other surprises in the film. If you haven’t seen it and want to do so cold, stop now.
I found it very enjoyable. It has much to recommend it as an entertainment. The acting is superb. (Yay! Albert Finney!) The action is fast-paced, the cinematography is gorgeous and the locations are enticing. (Macau!) There are numerous allusions to the Bond legacy for fans. (Yay! The Aston Martin! Yay! Moneypenny! [Super-yay that Moneypenny kicks some ass!]) And they never miss an opportunity to show Daniel Craig shirtless. (Shirtless!)
So I really liked it.
Thus I am saddened to report that there are so many ludicrous plot holes that, driving home as the adrenaline ebbed, the movie totally fell apart as a story as I turned it over in my head. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Admittedly, trying to wring sense out of a Bond flick is kind of a silly endeavor, but the last three films have made attempts at a certain seriousness, and so when one collapses under the weight of its dumb inconsistencies then it undermines the effort.
Here are some of the more glaring problems, starting with the one filled to the brim with WTF:
1) Bond meets a glamorous femme fatale at a casino. She invites him to join her on her boat should he escape the (inept) henchmen waiting to kill him. (Yay! Bad guys getting killed by deadly captive animals!) He joins her for assignation on said boat, which puts off for her lover’s headquarters. Upon arrival at said headquarters, Bond and woman are bound and taunted/tormented by Bad Guy. Woman has appropriately cinematic demise.
I will put cash in your hand if you can explain either Bond’s motivation or the woman’s in this case. Please help me understand what on earth either of them were thinking. Despite evincing manifest terror for herself when she meets Bond, she still wants him to join her on a boat from which escape is impossible, packed with her menacing lover’s heavily-armed goons as it sails toward an isolated location where they will both almost certainly be killed? Why? I guess Bond had enough confidence in his own skills and cunning to walk right into a… hell, does it even count as a trap if the prey simply strolls right into it? Mmmmmmaybe 007 wanted to find the villain badly enough to saunter nonchalantly onto his pleasure craft and sail into his clutches. But it was flagrantly suicidal on the part of the woman, and a transparently dumb plot point.
1a) Unhinged evil guy’s HQ is apparently an island he coveted, which was abandoned when (via computer) he created the illusion that it was contaminated with poisonous chemicals. Fine. OK. As much sense as the usual Bond Bad Guy HQs go. But nobody with a preexisting interest in the island ever sent guys with Hazmat suits to actually check on its status? No dudes with gas masks and test tubes to confirm the computer readouts? They just wrote the whole thing off? Baloney.
2) Much of the plot hinges on M keeping her job at MI6. We are meant to be rooting for her to do so, because she is played (in usual first-rate style) by Dame Judi Dench at her brusquest. Brusque British women = competent, right? We want her to keep her job, which seems mainly to consist of barking orders and then staring stonily into the rain.
No. In “Skyfall,” M is disastrously incompetent and at one point criminally negligent.
The movie opens with Bond and another agent tracking a man who has stolen a computer file with the fake names and real identities of all the undercover British agents embedded with terrorist organizations. They do not retrieve it. Later, MI6 headquarters explodes, killing eight agents. (I counted the coffins.) And a little later, Bad Guy starts revealing the names of the undercover agents via YouTube. (Topical!) At least three of them are killed.
Let us remind ourselves that in real life, the head of the CIA resigned in disgrace because of an affair. And political hay was made when the ambassador to the UN mischaracterized a terrorist attack as a spontaneous burst of violence, possibly jeopardizing her chances at career advancement. (I think the latter is particularly weak tea, but that’s not my point.) Yet we’re meant to want the head of MI6 to keep her job as she presides over a steady stream of death and destruction? No. A real-life M would have been forced to leave promptly with the loss of the computer file, and rightly.
But that’s not all! NO! When the Bad Guy escapes (again, on her watch) and is (correctly) believed to be heading for her to kill her, rather than heed the urgent pleas of her agents to get to a secure location she ignores them and remains at a government hearing so she can defend her reputation. She does not calmly but firmly shut the meeting down and allow people to get to safety. Nope, she quotes Tennyson. She knowingly remained vulnerable to attack (which claimed yet more lives) in a room that also held several high-ranking members of the British government!
Garbage! Not only should she be sacked, but she should be put on trial for reckless endangerment and negligent manslaughter.
2a) When it became apparent that their boss was choked with hubris and not leaving the hearing, why did MI6 not immediately swarm the building with additional security? How were three men with guns able to blast their way in, when agents knew a lethal criminal was making a beeline toward Westminster? Stupid!
3) Bond eventually spirits M back to his childhood home to lure the Bad Guy (the famous “Crocodile Dundee 2” gambit). There, with naught but his old groundskeeper for back-up, he takes down a small army of henchmen when many of them conveniently step on all of his booby traps (the “Home Alone” defense). As the Bond manse is blasted and bombed into smithereens, James bravely holds Bad Guy off while groundskeeper takes M to safety via a secret passage.
But do they stay hidden in the vast dark of the Scottish moors? No, friends, they do not. They signal their location via bobbing flashlight (a move so dunderheaded I was sure it must have been a trick on their part — it wasn’t) as they make their way to the family chapel, a confined space that they then illuminate. When Bad Guy arrives, he finds M not hiding in some concealed cranny, but sitting alone and unarmed in a pew. (See above re: M, incompetence and.) Bond arrives just in time to save M, so she can die of battle wounds in his arms a couple of minutes later.
What an awful lot of trouble to end up with a dead M. Doesn’t that mean the Bad Guy, um… kinda won? And wasn’t there the little matter of the stolen computer file with the names and everything? I guess that problem just… went away?
3a) Upon finding M sitting alone and unarmed in a confined, illuminated space, Javier Bardem spends a few minutes gnawing vigorously on the scenery. He then presses his cranium against hers, puts his gun in her hand, and tearfully implores her to shoot them both with the same bullet.
WHAT?!??!
3ai) M! You have his frigging gun!!!! Move your goddamn head and shoot him in his!
3aii) Whence this maudlin shitshow, Javier? Weren’t you just a few scenes back happy to blow her away without hesitation? Would you not have done so, were it not for the heroics of Ralph Fiennes? You seem strangely conflicted now. Maybe you should have seen your analyst before heading up to Scotland?
So, yeah. “Skyfall” was oodles of fun to watch while it was happening, but it falls apart completely when one happens to start thinking about it. (And the above are just the major plot holes I could think of between last night and this morning. Don’t even get me started on the strangely elaborate assassination in Shanghai.) I’m glad I went. But the plot (while nowhere near as silly as, say, “Diamonds Are Forever”) still left a lot to be desired.
I agree, and have so many other quarrels with this flick. Was Bardem’s character not and identical replica of the joker? They even had a scene when he was walking away from Bond’s childhood home in which Bardem was a silhouette with his hair in a tangle that could have been placed in the Dark Knight and I wouldn’t have been the wiser. There was no solid, standard Bond Girl, and there was no (okay there was a little bit of) Bond suave. Mind you the “that’s just a waste of good scotch” line after Bardem shoots the girl in the head was pretty classy.
While the plot was indeed perforated, I thought the film was a marvelous character study for Bond. The movie took the cartoonish character of James Bond and made him into an actual person. Why did he come back to MI-6? For the same reason he ended the psych interview after being prompted with the word “Skyfall.”
You bet. The writing within each scene was very good, and I did appreciate that they’ve fleshed Bond out. That was one of the main things I liked about the film, which I would still recommend on its other strengths.
There is a difference, I believe, between a major plot hole and a situation that requires some suspension of disbelief. This is a Bond film, after all. Perhaps a lengthier point-by-point rebuttal later…
I agree. But for all three of the major points above, I defy you to think of a non-stupid explanation for:
1) Bond and paramour embarking on a voyage to suicide
2) M deciding to sit tight while a maniac happily blasts his way toward her (and her boss… and at least one member of Parliament)
3) All but hopping up and down and yelling “Yooooooo, hoooooooo!” as said maniac weepily trundles toward her, where again she sits patiently (and apparently having dropped the gun she had scant minutes before)
1) Bond has the transmitter, he’s confident he can signal his location. The woman is irrational due to years of crushing psychological torment, and clings to the possibility that Bond can kill him. Yeah, it’s a double-stretch. I did like the way that Bond lets her get killed, though. One thing I like very much about the Craig reboot of the Bond series (and let’s be clear, these last three movies are nothing more than a single over-arching retcon) is that they do make Bond more than a little bit of a monster, which he rather is. He’s not a hero, he doesn’t always save the girl. Often, he gets her killed.
2) That part made no sense at all. Particularly M’s history and character thread of ruthless efficiency. She would have snapped her case shut, stood up, and said, “Unfortunately, we have had an incident to which I must attend” and stomped out in Grande Dame fashion. M’s treatment in this movie was shabby.
3) Yes.
“He’s not a hero, he doesn’t always save the girl. Often, he gets her killed.”
As much as I love Goldfinger (because how could you not!), it’s one of the nastier ones in that Bond gets two women (sisters, at that) killed. And his attitude toward both is a shrug at best.
I don’t protest any of your points except the first one (1). Strongly implied in Chicks fear is the fact that this particular villain is everywhere, he can do anything and get anywhere and fleeing him will only make things worse. Sure her three escorts are left to fail to deal with Bond but she clearly feels incapable of escaping or, if she escapes, making good on it. The invitation to the boat is proffered because he expresses interest in meeting her Boss. She knows he has no interest in rescuing her so a request to “Get me out of this mess” would be a futile and humiliating endeavor. Her message was essentially “I’m stuck and I’m screwed. Bad Guy is gonna tow me out to his lair and kill me, possibly horribly. I can’t get away and if I somehow did he’d just get me again. But If you can survive my goon escorts attack feel free to join me on my death boat. At least I can shag some Daniel Craig and maybe throw a Hail Mary that you’ll somehow off the dude before he kills me.”
I see where you’re going, but consider:
1) She has witnessed personally that he had the resources and skill to track and kill Patrice, this supposedly ghost-like super-assassin.
2) She asks “Can you kill him?” and he says he can. So…
Does she believe him? If not, why throw your life away shagging a handsome guy if doing so will inevitably get you killed? He’s hot, but he’s not that hot. If so, why not say “This is the name of his boat. We will be sailing to this abandoned island. If you’ve been told it’s chemically contaminated, it isn’t. (He just made it seem that way.) This is his name, so far as I know. Kill him. After that, the shagging.” She at least stands some chance of survival in that case.
I think it was implied that she was being taken to him to be killed anyhow. I didn’t get the impression that she was being killed due to her cooperation with Bond. Perhaps I didn’t read it correctly?
I think it was implied that she was being taken to him to be killed anyhow.
Really? I didn’t pick up on that. If that’s the case, then it changes things substantially. Silva does make some reference to getting rid of things that have become redundant (or some such line) before doing her in, but at that point it’s already become obvious that she slept with Bond.
Did anyone else get the same impression as North?
Yes. She was bait and she knew it.
Hmmmmm.
I get that she was under very tight control, and was afraid for herself lest she step out of line. I did not necessarily get that she was on her way to get killed either way. But assuming I simply missed what the film was communicating, at least it makes sense that she’d want a little bit of Daniel Craig action before getting rubbed out.
She had been a sex slave previously. Through abuse, drugs, and violence, she’s become used to following instructions as a survival and coping mechanism. She’s given the job in the casino of finding out who killed Patrice because she’s shown signs of intelligence and maybe because she looks western and so makes for distinctive-looking bait in a Macau casino.
So, Bond comes in the casino and by virtue of presenting the chip is the guy who killed the dangerous assassin. Bond is therefore even more dangerous. Remember: danger = sexy.
Now, she knows her job is to either get him killed or bring him in to the boss. So she must see to it that either he gets eaten by the exotic pets, gunned down or beaten by the muscle, or he’s getting on that boat out to Abandoned Island Bad Guy HQ. If she fails, then she’s let the boss down and she will be punished or killed. So, her nervousness and fear make a great deal of sense. And I’m at least willing to suspend my disbelief that she wants him on that boat. Bond wants on that boat because it’s the best and maybe only way to get closer to the villain.
Now, as for the shagging? As to her, it’s either 1) dangerous guys are sexy and Bond is hot to begin with, or 2) Bond said he could kill the boss, so maybe he’s her ticket out of there and therefore worth pleasing (Doc’s “Hail Mary” theory). As to Bond, he’s got several hours of sitting around on a luxury yacht with nothing else to do other than the hottie. And it’s a Bond film, so as a member of the audience, I demand to see some seduction mixed in with the action, intrigue, and gadgetplay.
So the upshot is — I’m willing to suspend my disbelief here. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief that the groundskeeper would keep the flashlight on while guiding M to the chapel, blowing their cover, too.
M sitting there at the Parliamentary hearing while she’s aware that Javier Bardem is coming to kill her and everyone else in the room? Either she’s sociopathic enough to think that a good scare will rattle the MP’s who are trying to hassle her (which would be consistent with her willingness to risk killing Bond, also an insane risk) or it simply doesn’t occur to her that the threat is that imminent and she can’t think of a good political way to cut the hearing short while she’s the one in its rhetorical cross-hairs. None of which are good decisions for a spymaster to be making; any and all of which would demonstrate why Ralph Finnes was right and it was time for M to retire with her honor intact and the thanks of Queen and country in her pocket.
Re 1), it is well established that said love interest is in an, um, somewhat abusive and controlling relationship with who we are led to believe is one of the most powerful and evil people on the planet. Your advice is that she should…do what? Isn’t that Bardem’s boat? Aren’t those his employees running the boat? Doesn’t she know that? My guess is probably so. It’s an illusion that she controls anything. And Bond asked her to take him to Bardem. Why? Because a) he’s Bond and he dives into everything head first, b) Moneypenny, c) the radio transmitter.
I’ll get to the others later.
OH but you may like this:
http://www.vulture.com/2012/11/which-james-bond-villain-plan-would-have-worked.html?mid=agenda–20121109
Space awesome
Fun!
The World Bank economist doesn’t mention that the Bank (and the IMF) were right in the middle of the Bolivia situation and pretty much the ones who pushed the country into selling off its water in the first place.
Referencing the Water Wars means that Quantum of Solace will always have a special place in my heart.
My biggest suspension of disbelief is probably detailed in that thread that North just linked, but before I read it I’ll go ahead and lay it out, here.
It is one thing to have a plot with plots within plots. This can work, where you have double-crosses and plans that lead your opponent to act in a certain way that you have in fact accounted for and used as a step in your own plan.
It’s another thing to have plots that are so convoluted that they require massive amounts of planning to cover contingencies that only occur through completely random chance. If you don’t constrain your opponent’s choices to the point where they must do Thing, you can’t reasonably suspect that Thing will occur.
Movie writers screw this up *all* the time, so it’s something I’ve come to expect and not get hypercritical about.
There’s no reason for Bardem to survive capture by Bond. Indeed, there’s no reason for Bond to capture him, at all. You have the lair, and all the computers, and Bond’s a 00 for cryin’ out loud. Why would any competent villain assume that Bond is going to capture him and take him back to MI6 where the next step in your plan will happen… when Bond can just shoot him in the face… and indeed, has no reason *not* to do so? And you have rigged a (very cool theater moment) crazy-ass booby trap in your escape route from MI6 that assumes that someone is going to be following you and you’ll be able to trigger an explosion that isn’t designed to kill them, but instead cause a train to come flying in through the roof and kill them? Looked great on screen, but lacked verisimilitude (would have been better if the train was full of people) and was simply a crazy plot point.
The plot also required that Q try to hack Silva’s computer at just exactly the right time for Silva to emerge into the underground station and get the police outfit handed to him, then head to Westminster where at that very moment M was being grilled by a government minister, and also that M will decide to just stay there after knowing about the escape rather than going somewhere else!
Not to mention Q not being smart enough to use an isolated computer to do the hacking after there had been prior evidence of Silva hacking in to MI-6.
Quite.
That’s one of those things that I just write off, now.
Nobody in their right mind would do anything with a computer like what they do in the movies. It’s just there, whatever, I can’t get hung up on that or I’d never go to a movie again.
I watched those scenes and thought to myself “I’m sure this would be driving me bananas right now if I knew much at all about computers.” But I don’t, so it didn’t particularly.
But even I knew enough to think the same thing as Burt above.
I keep saying that producers should bring their kids in whenever computers are used in movies. That way, at least somebody who has used a computer before and knows roughly what they look like during normal operation is there.
If they keep this up, everybody is going to figure out that we programmers do all of our human / machine interaction through crazy 3D virtual reality GUIs on giant projectors. That’s why we can write code and the rest of you can’t figure out why your email won’t load.
OK, enough people have crafted a plausible psychological explanation for Major Plot Qualm 1 above that I am willing to Suspend Disbelief and give the screenplay a pass on that one. (I will buy a round of scotch for Patrick, Burt and North when next [or ever] I have the pleasure of their company. I believe commenter Joe still owes me a bottle of scotch for a long-forgotten Oscar bet.)
I still think Qualms 2 and ( pace Burt) 3 are outstanding and problematic.
Frankly I think you understate 2a) actually. A scenario where gunmen break into parliament and shoot up a hearing wouldn’t lead to M being fired in disgrace. Or rather it wouldn’t JUST lead to M being fired in disgrace. Frankly I see no way that it wouldn’t bring down the entire government that employed her. Remember, in a parliamentary system the Government stands only until it loses a vote in parliament (any vote) which counts then as a vote of no-confidence and triggers a new election. I promise you that if a fish up of M’s proportion occurred in England that the ruling government would promptly fall. Frankly I suspect it’d be considered a scandal if the Government didn’t resign and call new elections after the dust had settled.
So in conclusion I think you’re more right in 2A than you even realized.
I’ll concede 2).
Regarding 3), do you really think M’s strength and reflexes could beat Bardem’s, who was a top field agent, is much younger and in apparently very good shape? Plus, if I recall, he’s holding her hand and her head is sandwiched between the gun and his (though maybe my memory’s foggy)….and finally, let’s not forget that she’s about a minute away from dying from loss of blood. Do folks stay quick and lucid up the last second in situations like that?
Anyway. The biggest holes for me were 1) the flashlight…that was just plain stupid, and I would have expected more from Albert Finney, 2) no way Bond would have allowed himself to go unshaven for so long, especially with how awful he looked. At least he would have waited for the beard to progress past the awkward stage before allowing himself to be seen.
Of all my gripes with the movie, the bit with M’s head and the gun was low on the list. But still, she had his gun!
I did not mind Bond’s stubble.
I agree sir, M should’ve been fired! Indeed………….
I think that the count of continuity and factual errors, let alone ineptitude etc is at 32 and counting. See:
http://www.moviemistakes.com/film9442
For those of us who go for sheer escapist enjoyment it was fun to hear the old theme music as the Aston Martin was revealed.
Plot holes and nonsense abound in Skyfall for sure.
In the opening scene, why didn’t the lady agent shoot the bad assasin guy after hitting Bond by mistake?
For that matter, why did the lady agent also carry a crummy little popgun Walther PPK to shoot at the bad guys? Those little things are good for carrying concealed in your tuxedo to shoot the guy 4 feet from you.
The guards were comically inept in the scene where M is testifying to the panel of politicians. A guard runs in, bang, dead. Another guard runs in, bang dead. Clever that the guards standing around outside have various machine guns but never come inside to try them on the bad guys.
One unintentionally funny part for me was when the music came up after Bond’s old Aston Martin was destroyed by the helicopter and Bond looked enraged. I seemed as if his car being wrecked was the final straw dammit!
Small point: When Finney hands Bond his father’s shotgun he calls it his *rifle*. You don’t have to be the president of the NRA to know a shotgun is not a rifle.
I’ll never forget seeing Thunderball as a young man up on the screen, now that’s a Bond movie.
“Do you mind if she sits this one out? She’s just dead.”
“I think he got the point.”
“This seems to be a woman’s gun.” “You know a lot about guns Mr. Bond.” “No, I know a lot about women.”
In the opening scene, why didn’t the lady agent shoot the bad assasin guy after hitting Bond by mistake?
This also occurred to me at the time. “Shame you shot James, but at least your second shot will be much cleaner.”
It’s not a shotgun. It’s an “elephant gun” (look at what Sean Connery carried in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) which is in fact a double-barreled rifle, a very potent one at that. Bond should have used it to fire at the helicopter, rather than using the relatively low energy rounds of his automatic weapon.
I’m still waiting for someone, ANYONE to explain to me how Bad Guy killed all of the guards at MI6 when he escaped.
What did he kill them with…his bad breath??? A hidden gun that no one ever bothers to show or mention????
Why does this gaping leap of implausibility escape everyone else??????
Ruined the movie for me.
That one also occurred to me.
[Aside — since we’re talking about other shit that bothered us about this movie, I may as well question why they would go to the trouble to hire an assassin for four million euros, have him fly to Shanghai, cut a hole in the window of a skyscraper and shoot their target from next door when by all appearances everyone in the fishing room with the target was in on the assassination!??!?!? They all seemed totally blasé when he keeled over dead, clearly knowing it was coming. Why didn’t one of them just shoot him? Why all the elaborate hoopla?]
I guess re: Silva’s escape that we’re meant to assume he’s such a Super Bad-ass Former Spy that he can kill them with his Mad Skillz. Which means that MI6 is in the habit of hiring super-incompetent guards.
Bond Villians have been hiring incompetent henchmen and the marksmanship skills of invertebrates for many years now. Apparently MI-6 draws from the same talent pool.
Good luck firing a bad henchman. The Henchman’s Union just won’t let it happen.
You know what bothered me? Why Bond would take the woman he was trying to save (i.e. M) to a place where there is no way of defending yourself (i.e. no weapons), bring no backup, and then just let her hang around instead of making her hide somewhere on the moor… or in the chapel from the get-go… or in the passage. He could have also just had someone else he trusted (e.g. Mallory or someone like that- if he had just picked a guy at random, chances are he would have been safe in picking someone who wasn’t under orders from Silva) bring M to another remote location somewhere else while he proceeded to Skyfall. This really bugs me. There’s some suspension of belief, but then this was sheer stupidity in the plot. And given that the only thing at stake in the whole movie is M’s life, the fact that she dies means that the good guys lost. Where’s the Bond in that?
Couple more plot points to ponder:
1) When Bond is shot by Moneypenny, where is he shot and how does he recover? The shoulder bullet wound was caused by Patrice when he’s in the construction equipment on the train and it’s the only bullet wound we ever see. Where did Moneypenny’s shot hit him that caused him to fly off the train to the water below?
2) That desert island that was Silva’s lair. How long ago are we to believe this island was deserted? If he caused the people to desert so fast, why does it look like the Chernobyl site or an atom bomb test site? How did it age that fast and become so decrepit so quick?
3) The flashlight thing killed me. I wanted to yell at the screen. No one escapes a psycho chasing them into the dark and then fires up their flashlight to show their position. Not a civilian, and certainly not a secret agent-type person.
4) If the plan was to lure Silva to his death to chase M, why go with no weapons and scarce means to defend yourself? And M dies, so it’s a wash between Silva dying and achieving his goal of killing M. And yes, the whole final scenes seemed like Home Alone except deadly.
I was entertained, but the plot holes and inconsistencies really made it a challenge. Especially with the rave reviews it’s been getting.
I found the misuse of tech to link parts of the plot together to be laughable.
1) No way anyone is going to decrypt a properly encrypted hard drive, but okay this is James Bond.
2) “Sorry, you’re going out of range” when Bond jumps on the train. Out of the range of what? GPS? Radio transmitters? Pointless line.
3) The tracking of the hack on the map was just silly.
4) “Only a few people in the world use this ammo” as a computer screen is pulled up showing them. Computers really are magical in this film. A terrible way to link to the Shanghai part. A simple identification of possible suspect photos would have been far better. (And why wasn’t the ammo removed earlier? Did James Bond not just have a full physical? Surely he’d have been sent to the hospital if he was shot?)
5) A gun that James Bond can only fire when he’s not wearing gloves. Useful. Pointless plot device that was used so that a bad guy could get eaten by a komodo dragon!
6) Let’s just plug Silva’s laptop into MI6’s network! Oh dear.
7) Look at how we hack! Encryption that would take anyone a bazilliongazillion years to decrypt can be solved with big colourful pictures with various words interconnected with lines! And look, a column of hexadecimal on the left with the computer’s password in plain text! And James Bond manages to spot it! Now we now Silva’s plan! Terrible, terrible, terrible. This is the kind of thing you’d expect from a film like that guinea pig thing (G-Force?)
8) Wahoo! A virus has opened all of the doors, Silva is free! Don’t worry, there are no security guards. I mean, this is just MI6.
9) M escapes from Silva in the mansion and then decides to waddle around with a flashlight. There’s no way that Silva would see that! Ridiculous way to get Silva to chase her.
I really thought that with Casino Royale James Bond was becoming a more serious, gritty affair. Apparently not. I’m surprised they didn’t have the invisible car in it.
“Admittedly, trying to wring sense out of a Bond flick is kind of a silly endeavor, but the last three films have made attempts at a certain seriousness, and so when one collapses under the weight of its dumb inconsistencies then it undermines the effort.”
Thank you. My thoughts exactly! Hard to forgive such flaws in a movie that poises itself so sanctimoniously.