Review: Skyfall

007 (Daniel Craig) is nearly killed on assignment in Istanbul during an attempt to nab a hard drive with crucial info on NATO agents. He gets accidentally (and almost fatally) shot by flirty fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris), whilst in a tussle with a baddie on top of a train. Laying low for a bit, he is eventually called back into active duty by M (Dame Judi Dench) when MI6 HQ in London is bombed by a rogue (and frankly loony) former agent named Silva (Javier Bardem), a cyber terrorist who has one helluva axe to grind (Not the most original motive for a Bond villain, but nevermind). Meanwhile, MP Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), M’s superior, is hovering about seemingly wanting to put M (and Bond for that matter) out to pasture. Bérénice Lim Marlohe plays the exotic Severine, an abused woman closely associated to Silva, whom Bond attempts to get to. Ben Whishaw is the new Q, and Albert Finney turns up as a grizzled old man with a long-standing connection to Bond himself.

 

Daniel Craig and I just don’t see eye to eye, especially in his stint as James Bond. In fact, I’m yet to see a Daniel Craig 007 film that I’ve liked and I still think he’s the weakest thing about the films themselves. He’s just too thuggish and lacking in charm for my liking. However, the films are at least getting better, and judging by this 2012 entry from director Sam Mendes (“American Beauty”, “Road to Perdition”, “Jarhead”), the next one will perhaps be a genuinely good one. This one, though? It almost makes the mark, but is at least watchable and that’s certainly something. I still don’t understand how Craig’s charmless 007 scores with women when he drinks and broods all day long and has a face like a torn arse, but I guess I’ll just never understand the appeal with him.

 

The film got on my right side early on, with a cute Bond musical sting to start us off, and I immediately took to the enormously appealing Naomie Harris as a Bond Girl, though by the end of the film one realises all isn’t as it seems with her, and I’m not talking about the Good/Bad Bond Girl thing. Yes, she does at first appear to play Carey Lowell to Bérénice Lim Marlohe’s Talisa Soto in a film that does remind one quite a bit of Timothy Dalton’s best Bond film, “Licence to Kill”, but there’s an added twist that some of you will guess (I did).

 

The film easily has the best (and best-looking) Bond girls of the Craig era. The whole opening section of the film is fun, with some relatively stable camerawork by Roger Deakins (“The Shawshank Redemption”, “The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford”) in the cool rooftop motorbike chase. The scenery may not be as exotic as in previous globe-trotting Bond films, but Deakins’ lensing of more British locales works here. Meanwhile, a nice bit of biffo on top of a train makes good use of Craig’s ruggedness, even if ruggedness is pretty much all the guy brings to the party aside from brooding and sulking. And anytime Bond’s fate is left in doubt is always a memorable way to start a Bond film, though it’s certainly not the first time (“You Only Live Twice”).

 

Like all Bond films, the little details are always important in assessing the film’s worth, and this film has one of the best (and somewhat old-school) main title designs in at least a decade, by Daniel Kleinman (“GoldenEye”, “Tomorrow Never Dies”, “Casino Royale”). Meanwhile, no one can really complain about Adele’s Oscar-winning title song, which has the right sound and feel for a Bond song moreso than any other since Tina Turner’s underrated title tune for “GoldenEye”, even if it’s not her best vocal. At the very least, it’s my favourite Bond song since Garbage’s underrated title tune for “The World is Not Enough”, and it’s probably better than that too. Also, I have to credit Thomas Newman (“Less Than Zero”, “The Shawshank Redemption”, “Pay it Forward”, “In the Bedroom”) for giving us a score post-1999 that doesn’t sound like his work on “American Beauty”. I wouldn’t exactly call it a Bondian music score, but it’s certainly Bond-like, and every now and then, you’ll hear something familiar. I truly marked out when the James Bond Theme, bass guitar included, was featured about 90 minutes into the film. At the end of the film, another old favourite makes its appearance, as the film pays tribute to 50 years of Bond.

 

I said earlier that I really liked Naomie Harris, and in fact she’s not only really appealing (and although only two years younger than Honor Blackman was in “Goldfinger” she looks much younger than Blackman did), but she works well with Craig. The glum, moody bastard needs softening and Harris helps him with that. I’ll give Daniel Craig one thing, in this one he finally gives us some (glib) humour in the Connery vein, and has a particular line in sarcastic quips. It’s something, at least, and I appreciated the subtle improvement, as Craig brings 007 somewhere in between Connery, Dalton, and Lazenby, but closer to Dalton and not nearly as close to Ian Fleming’s original creation as many of Craig’s defenders will assert. And since we’ve had 50 years of Bond films, I think fidelity to Fleming is a moot point anyway. The films are an entity of their own nowadays, especially since Fleming is no longer really being drawn upon. He’s not quite as dull as in his previous two stints, but I still prefer “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” and “Licence to Kill” to this film, let alone most of the Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan films. And I still believe Craig would make for a much better henchman than he does Agent 007. I’ll credit the Craig films with one thing, they’ve shown an aging 007, which is something that definitely ought to have happened by now.

 

The film takes an awful long time to really give us the villain, but so did “You Only Live Twice” and that one featured my favourite villain, Donald Pleasence’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Javier Bardem’s rogue former agent Silva isn’t a match for Blofeld, but he nonetheless steals the entire film and is easily the best Bond villain since Louis Jourdan’s urbane Kamal Khan in 1983’s underrated “Octopussy”. I prefer Jourdan’s urbane villainy, but Bardem is good, more unpredictable, volatile, and sinister. Yes, I would’ve liked him more front and centre early on, but he makes his every moment on screen count. I don’t know whether it’s the blond hair, but he’s creepy fun (borderline ‘swishy’ too) and is the Bond villain that Christopher Walken should have been in “A View to a Kill”, but ultimately disappointed. I also rather enjoyed a Bond villain who entered Bond’s home turf for a change, rather than being in some exotic, foreign hideaway. In a way, that brings it a sense of reality and even prescience (and only slightly tipping over into real world terrorism situations, which I find off-putting in a film like this, but thankfully it’s only a minor element and it won’t annoy everyone). I’m not sure we needed a rather obvious “Silence of the Lambs” rip-off with Bardem escaping his glass casing, though.

 

Less enjoyable is Ben Whishaw’s new and younger Q. While it was nice to find out what the ‘Q’ stands for, I found it a shame that Q has been turned into a mere computer hacker. I’d be fine with the character if it had been given any other name, to be honest. Meanwhile, I wonder if MI6 could use the services of Edward Snowden or Julian Assange. Q does get off one nice line, however: ‘Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that kind of thing anymore’. I also think that in addition to more Bardem, the film could’ve benefited from more Ralph Fiennes as bureaucrat Mallory. The role becomes more important as it goes along, but at first it seems like a somewhat dull, nondescript role for the esteemed Fiennes to take on.

 

Dame Judi Dench is awfully bloody good as M, but let’s face it, the material she has been given far outweighs anything Bernard Lee or Robert Brown were given. I could argue that the Craig 007 films try too hard to be great dramas instead of great Bond films, but none of it was boring here and the M/Bond relationship has always been interesting, not just with Craig but even with the Brosnan Bond films where Dench first started her stint in the role. I do have to question, though, just how many criminal masterminds M unwittingly knows, because there was one in “The World is Not Enough”, and another here. No wonder she’s considered a bit of a relic here. The film also boasts an interesting extended cameo from Albert Finney, even though it’s mostly interesting because you can tell the role was clearly meant for the retired Sean Connery. It’s a shame Connery couldn’t be persuaded to take on the role, especially for the 50 years of Bond thing, but it’s a terrific little role for Finney (who I’m not normally much of a fan of). It actually reminded me a lot of Patrick Macnee’s role in “A View to a Kill”. Finney sure as hell doesn’t sound Scottish, though, but then again Connery sounded awfully Scottish for a Spaniard in “Highlander”, didn’t he?

 

Meanwhile, the action and spectacle throughout is pretty damn effective, and not just the opening rooftop chase and train fisticuffs. The action is tough without being too blunt or dull, and Bond isn’t a mere thug, despite being played by a guy with a face like a torn arse (Hey, you loved it the first time I used the expression, why not repeat it?). There’s also an excellent train crash unlike any that you’ve ever seen. The Scottish sequence with Finney is pretty cool in that it makes you think the action is about so slow, but in fact, it is actually reaching its climax with a fiery skirmish. But this brings me to another flaw I found with the film, albeit more of a disagreement in style. Whilst I applauded the steady camerawork of Mr. Deakins, his use of colour correction/filters was seriously off-the-charts annoying to me (Faithful readers surely knew I was going to get to this eventually, right?). Yes, there was a truly amazing and beautiful dark blue hued scene where a fistfight takes place in the shadowy foreground, with a giant jellyfish screensaver-like image in the background. That was incredible, and Deakins thankfully uses more than one colour throughout, though I wish it were more than one at a time. However, a lot of the time the use of colour is either silly or incoherent. An underground tunnel with yellow light globes that is entirely bathed in neon blue? The interior of a building just so coincidentally has the exact same dark/neon blue lighting? Except in some parts that are amber? Um...yeah. M has a white light in her office but it lights up amber in colour? WHAT? The Scottish finale has a ridiculous amount of amber lighting/filters during what is already an explosive sequence, making everything look like hell on earth. That may be intentional, but it’s also absurd. Like “Let Me In”, it makes a cold climate look inappropriately volcanic. This won’t bother everyone, but it’s my biggest pet peeve in cinema. The set design, however, is really interesting in that both MI5 and Bardem live in somewhat post-apocalyptic surroundings, and not ugly surroundings, just barren. It’s a very interestingly designed film.

 

Scripted by the trio of Neal Purvis, Robert Wade (who have written the previous two Daniel Craig entries), and John Logan (“The Last Samurai”, “Sweeney Todd”, “Rango”, “Hugo”), this isn’t exactly what I would call a good Bond film, but it is slowly steering the series back on course and is certainly watchable, if somewhat cannibalistic of other Bond films (“GoldenEye” and “Licence to Kill” especially). I’d rank it 13^th out of 25 Bond films (including the rogue entry “Never Say Never Again”, and both film adaptations of “Casino Royale”, but not the earlier TV version of it, which surely no one counts).

 

Rating: C+