Skyfall is the best Bond movie of all time. There, I said it. This film beats anything that Pierce Brosnan did, anything that Timothy Dalton did, certainly anything that Roger Moore did, and even anything that Sean Connery did. Be honest with yourself. If someone handed you a DVD or a blu ray of Goldfinger and another one of Skyfall, which would you rather watch? For me, 3 times out of 4, it would be Skyfall.

The reason for this can be summed up in one word: drama. This is the most dramatic film in the Bond pantheon. It has the best acting from character to character and it strikes the best balance between action and story. The thing about the Daniel Craig films is that they’re heavy on action. The same can be said about the Pierce Brosnan films, but Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace had better stories than any of the Pierce Brosnan films. GoldenEye could be ahead of Quantum in that regard, but that’s a debate for another day. The Craig films had good stories, but what carried them mostly were the action sequences, which were intense and memorable. In that regard they were much more like the modern Mission: Impossible films of the Jason Bourne films than the classic James Bond films.

Few of the action sequences in Skyfall measure up to the action sequences in the previous Craig films, but they’re more effective because there are fewer of them and they’re paced out better. It helps when you have Sam Mendes directing. Mendes won an Oscar for American Beauty, and had critical and box office success with other films like Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road before helming Skyfall. None of those films are known for their action sequences, so Mendes was a little outside of his wheelhouse for this film, but he still shows his considerable skills as a director by giving us a Bond film to which we feel an emotional attachment.

The relationship between Bond and M is the driving force in this film, and it’s one of a petulant son protecting a disciplinarian mother. A rogue MI6 agent is bent on assassinating M for past transgressions, and taking down MI6 with her. The villain, Silva, is in a position of strength since he knows the secrets of MI6 and he knows what moves M and Bond will make before they make them. It’s basic storytelling in that the villain is put in a position of power, and the hero needs to take action which moves the story forward. Bond spends the first half of the film reacting to Silva, but changes to a more proactive stance at the midway point of the film. Mendes spends the first half of the film getting us engaged with the characters and their relationships, so that we as an audience care about them and what happens to them. Then the second half of the film is spent dealing with the consequences of the first half. It’s a well balanced, well constructed, well paced story that any aspiring writer or director could study when constructing their own stories.

Another aspect of this film that is great is that it pays homage to previous Bond films throughout, whether it’s the Aston Martin car that Bond and M make their escape in or the new Q telling Bond that he’s not getting an exploding pen. At once they’re deconstructing and paying homage to the Bond of the past while ushering in the Bond of the present and future.

One Bond motif that is noticeably absent in Skyfall is the Bond girl. The case could be made for either Eve or Severine to fill that role, but neither of them are in the film nearly enough to justify that distinction. In fact, if there’s a Bond girl at all in this film, it’s M. She spends the most time with Bond, the plot circles around her issues and she’s the one with whom Bond forms the strongest emotional attachment. Her final scene is one that is emotionally jarring and poignant as Bond seems to mature right before our eyes because of her tutelage and guidance. But it could be an interesting source of debate. Is there a Bond girl in Skyfall, and if so, who is she?

There is no mistaking who the villain is in Skyfall, however. Javier Bardem brought all of the sinister magic to Silva that made him such a terrifying villain in No Country For Old Men and he spiced it up with a natural flare for Skyfall. His performance is among the very best villain performances in the series, and even though he isn’t overtly threatening the whole world with annihilation like other villains in the series, his psychotic and unrelenting focus on killing M and dishonoring her while he does it make him a truly threatening villain that the audience can legitimately fear. But there is more to Silva than that. He has depth and nuance, and that is another of the strengths of this film. Whether you agree with his motives or not, he has clear motivation for wanting to bring harm to M and to MI6. In his mind he is justified. He’s the perfect villain who is the hero of his own story.

Is Skyfall a perfect film? Certainly not. Perhaps I missed it, but I would really like to know how Bond survived falling a couple of hundred feet off the train bridge with multiple gunshot wounds. I’d like to know how he avoided drowning or bleeding to death or dying from the fall, because it isn’t terribly clear in the film.

However, over all this is the best film in the series. I don’t blame anyone for preferring Goldfinger or From Russia With Love or even On Her Majesty’s Secret Service to Skyfall, but in my opinion this film is the most dramatic, best acted and most balanced of any of the Bond films. Here’s how I know that Skyfall is a great film and the best Bond film. I’ve spent the past two and a half months watching all 23 Bond films that Eon Productions made, and now I’m bummed that I have to wait until next year to see another one. Always leave them wanting more, they say. Skyfall certainly does that.