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 Skyfall
can take its place alongside From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, and On Her
Majesty's Secret Service as the best Bond can offer. With an Oscar winner at the
helm and Oscar winners in two prominent roles, Skyfall overflows with talent
but, as always, it's the man with the tux and the Walther PPK that makes the
difference. With piercing blue eyes, Daniel Craig saunters into this endeavor to
his rousing two-note introduction with confidence. Now eight years and three
movies into his tenure, Craig has gotten through the teething stage that was
Quantum of Solace and has found his stride. He's the best Bond since Connery,
and that's perhaps because there's so much of the first 007 in his performance.
Gone is the silliness that defined Roger Moore's period and the superhero
dimension that enfolded Brosnan. Although Skyfall spends equal time looking back
and setting up the future, it never loses sight of the present and, in the
process, gives us the best 007 adventure in more than four decades.
Sam Mendes, gleeful at the opportunity to helm an entry into the most successful
motion picture franchise of all-time, proves himself as adept at escapist fare
as at more "serious" material. (Although one could argue those credentials were
previously established with Road to Perdition, in which he also worked with
Craig.) His staging of Skyfall's action sequences are expertly done with an
occasional hint of artistry (such as the scintillating confrontation between
Bond and bad guy Patrice with the electrified backdrop of Shanghai's skyline in
the background). He also causes elements of drama and pathos to percolate
through the suspense and pyrotechnics. Skyfall is the complete package, at least
to the extent that any Bond adventure could make such a claim. It challenges
perceptions without breaking the formula.
It has often been mentioned that Craig's first two outings showed Bourne
influences. With that in mind, Mendes opens Skyfall with Bond still in Quantum
of Solace mode then gradually transitions him back in time, bypassing Brosnan,
Dalton, and Moore - all the way back to the Golden Age of Connery. By its end,
Skyfall has brought us full circle and long-time fans will feel as if they've
come home. The closing scene is just about perfect and, if the world ended
tomorrow and there was never another Bond outing, a better conclusion to the
franchise would be hard to imagine.
Skyfall begins with a rousing pre-credits sequence set in Istanbul that climaxes
with a fight on top of a moving train. Bond is left for dead by MI6 but, when he
resurfaces, it's to a nonchalant "Where the hell have you been?" from M (Judi
Dench), who returns him to active duty before
 he's ready and sends him on a
global trek to locate a hard drive containing the names of all embedded field
agents before it can be decrypted. The bad guy, Silva (Javier Bardem), isn't
your usual 007 megalomaniac, however. He's not interested in world domination -
conquering a small island is enough for him. His goal is more personal and his
back story recalls that of Sean Bean's 006 in Goldeneye. Along the way, Bond
tussles with a younger (but no less cranky) Q (Ben Whishaw) and beds two Bond
girls - fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris) and exotic, sophisticated sex slave
Severine (Berenice Marlohe). He also meets M's boss, Gareth Mallory (Ralph
Fiennes), whom he dismisses as a "bureaucrat."
The film's structure is odd, with no big, overproduced climax and a narrative
that has more in common with the '60s films than with anything post-Connery.
Skyfall raises the emotional stakes to a level not seen since On Her Majesty's
Secret Service; even
Casino Royale
didn't push this many buttons. We learn tantalizing bits about Bond's past - not
enough to destroy the character's essential "in the moment" mystery, but enough
to dispel the theory that "James Bond" is just a code name. The character played
by Albert Finney is intriguing, and it's not hard to surmise this role was
written with Sean Connery in mind. (Connery, if ever offered the part, stuck to
his "never again" guns and elected to stay retired, but it takes little
imagination to envision him saying the lines.)
Mendes brings with him frequent collaborators Roger Deakins and Thomas Newman.
Deakins' cinematography may be the best ever in a Bond movie, and certainly the
best in recent years. This is old-school camerawork in that the picture is
stable and the fight scenes are easy to follow. Newman's score makes ample use
of the Monty Norman/John Barry "James Bond Theme" - the first time it has been
part of an incidental score since Craig took over. Adele's opening number, "Skyfall,"
hearkens back to the John Barry/Shirley Bassey collaborations.
Recent Bond movie openings have not been events. This is an exception. It
doesn't feel like a retread. The emphasis on the M/007 relationship introduces a
new, previously unexplored dynamic between the agent and his boss. Compare how
the two mesh in Skyfall with their stately, formal interaction in Dr. No. Over
the course of her previous six outings, Dench has been inching her authoritarian
personality closer to the point where she could be considered a full-fledged
character. Under Mendes, she achieves the goal. And the strength of her
performance is matched by that of Javier Bardem, who comes across not as a
sadistic lunatic but someone deeply wronged and tragically damaged. Sure,
there's a cartoon element to Silva - it's not possible to be a Bond villain
without going a little over-the-top - but he's not interchangeable with the many
less intriguing antagonists to face off against 007 in the past.
Because of MGM's bankruptcy issues, we have waited four long years to get
Skyfall. Convinced there was a story worth telling, Mendes stuck with the
production and the result justifies the wait. I'd rather get a new Bond of this
quality every four years than something along the lines of Quantum of Solace
with half the time in between. Skyfall is everything Bond should be,
encapsulating the best of all the eras - even the brief tenures of Dalton and
Lazenby - into a package that celebrates Bond 50 by reassuring us that Bond is
back.
For my entire movie going existence, I been watching the James Bond films and
even if some of them have been painfully dumb along the way, even the worst of
them still sort of work on some fundamental level in the same way that there is
no such thing as a bad hot dog at a baseball game. However, the series did lose
its luster for a while, partly because the movies got lazy and partly because
jumbo-sized cinematic spectacles of the type that it used to represent started
to become increasingly commonplace at the multiplexes and there were times in
which it seemed as if they they had passed irretrievably from the cool to the
passé. "Skyfall" is a great movie but one of the best things about it is that it
helps reinstate the series to true Event Movie status. As a state-of-the-art
action epic and as a character drama, it more than delivers the goods. When the
familiar insistence that “James Bond will return” greets viewers at the end of “Skyfall,”
it’s never felt more reassuring or poignant. “Skyfall” is reverent and nostalgic
without lapsing into self-parody, respectful without relenting to dour
solemnity. It would almost be more fitting if the film closed with the
insistence that James Bond is back and better than ever. Skyfall is the most
thrilling piece of cinematic entertainment to hit theaters this year.
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