There was barely a Bond girl in Skyfall - no double entendre - and it is still one of best Bond movies ever made. Certainly better than any non-Connery Bond, and right up there with Goldfinger, From Russia with Love, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which of course wasn't a Connery, but Lazenby looked just like him, and it was a powerhouse of a personal and spy-thriller story.Which describes Skyfall, easily the best movie about Bond's life, along with OHMSS. There's not a weak or wasted scene in Skyfall, from the stunning opener in which Bond is killed to the last in which Moneypenny is revealed and Bond reports to the new M for work. Of course Bond isn't killed in that opening segment, and the fact that we know that and still find the opener a shocker is a measure of how good this movie is.
The villain - Silva - is excellent and close to exceptional. Played by Javier Bardem with a blond wig, Silva is probably most reminiscent of Christopher Walken's Max Zorin's in a View to a Kill (probably Moore's worst), except Silva is a little more intense, brilliant, cracked, and makes a pass at Bond. Silva's also a lapsed MI6 agent, which also gives him a kinship to Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye. These similarities to earlier Bonds are actually one of the best features of Skyfall, which also brings back and nobly sacrifices Bond's Astin Martin and its firepower, which served so well in Goldfinger, Thunderball, and other Bond movies, and also has a call-out to Jaws' teeth,
Ah ... noble sacrifice. Skyfall is as much M's movie as Bond's - she more than Bond is the target of Silva's sociopathic anger - and the curtain call for Judi Dench's M is memorable indeed, and gives Skyfall another kinship to OHMSS. Just as Bond's beloved Tracy dies in his arms at the end of OHMSS, so M dies in Bond's arms close to the end of Skyfall. But rather than losing the love of his life, Bond is losing his metaphorical mother, another milestone in the gradual growing up of this Bond.
There's a wonderfully winning balance of old and new in Skyfall, with Bond at the fulcrum. M literally passes, Albert Finney puts in a strong appearance as Kincade (and old friend of Bond's family), and we see the gravestone of Bond's parents. On the new side of the ledger, we have a sharp young cyber-arrogant Q and a bright new Moneypenny - who actually is the first Moneypenny in Daniel Craig's Bonds and in this incarnation a field agent who comes in from the cold to take up residence in M's office. Ralph Fiennes is the new M, who comes in the from the cold of being Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and is pretty good with a gun. It's assuring to see Fiennes, who played Voldemort, put his acting power to the good.
Craig's performance is altogether perfect, ranging from the near-derelict Bond to the full tuxedoed casino man. The action scenes take him from the top of a train to nearly getting hit by a train from above in the Tube, with a man against helicopter, man on the underside of elevator, and all sorts of other goodies thrown in. There's gunplay everywhere you turn, from courtroom in London to misty fields in Scotland. Craig does these better than well, and the sheer intensity of the cinematography and speed of the scenes make the movie breathtaking.
Bond is in bed with just one woman, once, and Silva kills her before she has a chance to do much in the movie. That's the only fault I can find in the film, which was otherwise so extraordinary that it almost didn't matter, and maybe didn't matter at all. What Skyfall has finally given us is a Bond for the 21st century, as strong in its own way as Bond through the 20th, and I'm looking forward to many more.
14 comments:
Me, I didn't care for it much. My qualms were that Bond as a character is fundamentally about competence, excellence, strength, duty, etc.; and I thought the writing in this episode failed miserably on those fronts, being the exact opposite. Bond's prime objective was to protect M, and he fails miserably. He completely bails on his job, showing an utter lack of loyalty to his 00 job, duty, and country; which just isn't Bond. He's essentially thrown a tantrum because he got shot and quits to lay around moping, which are not "Bond values." He can't shoot straight or apparently even hold his drink. He fails at protecting the (barely present) Bond girl. Even M and MI6 are shown to be utter failures, given who the villain is (instead of an outside entity like SMERSH). Failure is the omnipresent theme in this movie, 180 degrees counter to what Bond and the franchise is about. I thought it was almost an anti-Bond movie. Bleah.
Good to have your opposing view, Andrew. Much of our disagreement is half empty/half full - I see the movie as Bond's success in ultimately getting the bad guy, performing brilliantly when he was a long way from being recuperated.
As for M's death: When you're dealing with that level of bad guy, it always comes to a point where survival or death of the hero, of whomever the hero is protecting, is a matter of luck. I see M's death in such circumstances as realistic, and a result that makes the movie more powerful.
One other point - from my wife - Bond was not just shot at the beginning, but shot on M's orders, which makes his opting out a little more justified. And, again, I would say realistic.
It was a good film in it´s genre and I agree that it was much more modern and pessimistic (in a good way). I still have some peeves with it:
- the hacking, crypto and computer talk was totally idiotic, they didn't even try to say something intelligent
- the spycraft was total nonsense, you never follow a car on your own, you need a team with up to 6 cars working in tandem
- there were a lot of stupid plot platitudes that have been overused in other films: the isolation cell (silence of the lambs), the lonely country building protected against swat team (ripley's game), the metro explosion (the matrix), the motorcycle hunt (indiana jones) etc.
Other than that it was a pleasant afternoon!
Thanks for the comment, uair. I guess I would say (a) the hacking talk made sense to me, what part did you think was idiotic? (b) Bond usually does things on his own, (c) sure, we've seen these gambits elsewhere, but they had a new flavor in Skyfall. For example, I found the metro explosion more shocking in Skyfall than in the Matrix because the Matrix was science fiction.
Nice review Paul and I agree with much of what you say and your quibbles (and some in the other comments as well). For me the best non-Connery Bonds are Casino Royale, OHMSS and Licence to Kill; but AVTAK is certainly a series low.
Just a minor fact point (us Bond fans are keen on such things).. I may be wrong, because I've only seen the film once, but I thought Silva had been head of station in Hong Kong, rather than a 00. They mentioned that M had become close to him when she was also stationed in the Far East.
Looking forward to Bond 24!
You may be right about Silva - but I'm just about to turn in for the night. I'll check tomorrow and put in a correction if needed. Thanks for picking up the likely error.
Well, couldn't resist checking. Turns out we were both a little wrong. Silva was an MI6 agent working under M - who was station head - in Hong Kong. No word I can find about Silva being a 00, though. Thanks again.
Thanks for an interesting review, Paul. A small correction, if I may: Bond was also in bed with a woman while "enjoying" death - and one assumes that he was there (or some other bed) quite a lot since he was out of action for months. ;)
I must say I completely disagree with Andrew, not only because I loved the movie, but because I disagree with his reasons of not liking it. It's amazing how different movies we saw. :)
The writing didn't fail, and didn't let Bond down. One of the classic things about heroes is that they face huge struggles and obstacles and overcome them. A weakness within oneself is the most powerful obstacle one can have, and conquering that doesn't make the hero less impressive, but more so.
What happened to him at the beginning shook him to the core - and not "just" because he got shot, and not even because he might have died because of it. Definitely no tantrum throwing there. The fact that he returned to duty to help the boss who didn't fully trust him, nearly got him killed, and considered him expendable shows as much loyalty and dedication to duty that is possible.
The physical and psychological issues he has upon returning to work are realistic, plus they add to the stuff he needs to overcome. That he manages to do that shows his strength, not weakness. If something is easy for you and you do it, then there's nothing heroic in doing it. Just like with fear: if you're not afraid of something then you're also not brave in facing it (merely reckless or too stupid to understand the risks). But if you're scared and still face that which scares you, that is brave. That includes facing your own weaknesses.
A Bond girl usually dies in Bond movies, and it's not considered a failure of Bond. His values were fine, and his loyalty to M and to his duty and country was commendable. Bond didn't fail in the end, quite the contrary despite M dying. His duty was not only to M, but to MI6, and to his country. The relevancy of MI6 was questioned, but it got proven that it was still relevant. M's legacy and life's work got saved. When they were leaving London, M was aware that she was a bait, and accepted it, and insisted herself that nobody else should get involved since there were all those other people dying when ultimately what Silva wanted was her life. (Not only that, but at that point his other objectives had pretty much been reached.) Bond and M both knew he wanted to kill her personally and would therefore come himself wherever M went. Getting her away from other people was protecting others. Getting away from technology was taking away Silva's advantage with that. Silva had to be captured no matter how. The rat trap worked, even if the bait died, too.
I find inner demons, as well as personal motivations of loyalty, betrayal and revenge to be far more interesting than someone or some organization simply wanting power and wealth. Silva worked as the enemy so well because he was what Bond might have become, a flip side of the coin in a way. Silva got broken by his extreme trials and resorted to destruction and revenge, destroying his own soul in the process, while Bond bent and hurt, but didn't break, and saved his soul. (I don't mean that in a religious sense at all, but just what happened to them as human beings.)
Bond got over his own demons and doubts in the process of facing them (including the twisted mirror image of Silva), getting back to work at the end, like he says himself "with pleasure".
Excellent comment, Tuulia - which I agree with wholeheartedly.
Though, about the first bedmate being a Bond girl - a little short in screen time to be a Bond girl, in my view ...
Thanks.
Ah, ok, just a woman he had sex with, but not a Bond girl. I see what you mean, one is not necessarily the other. (Like Camille in QoS was a Bond girl, but not a partner for sex.) However, you wrote that Bond was in bed with just one woman, and that's what I made the comment about... And maybe I should have counted Eve, too. I assume you don't count Eve as a Bond girl, either?
No - Eve (Monyepenny) is the quintessential anti-Bond girl :) Because they don't sleep together.
Are you sure they don't? I haven't quite decided how I interpreted that bit in Skyfall, could be seen either way.
Then you wouldn't count Quantum's Camille, either. Gets complicated... ;)
You have a point about Eve - I wasn't sure they didn't have sex until she was revealed as Moneypenny, which means my reasoning was a bit circular and therefore not 100% conclusive. It's also possible, now that I'm thinking about it, that Bond and Moneypenny in Craig-Bond-world not only did have sex (off camera), but could have sex on-camera in the future. Or, likely they didn't already sleep together, but could in the future. So you raise an interesting issue.
Camille is also especially interesting because there is a rumor that she might return ...
I hadn't heard that rumor about Camille... very interesting. I can easily imagine it possible for her to be incorporated into a plot in a natural way.
Now that the Moneypenny character is an ex-field agent she might not settle with mere flirting. She seems the type who wouldn't just let dear old James tease her, but would make her own move - the way James would. Want it? Just go for it. That sort of thing.
As for what already happened - hell if I know. The dialogue in the casino might imply that they did. Or that they didn't. Then at the end... Moneypenny mentioning close shave might be a reference to the close shave including what happened after. Or it might be a tease, sorta "close, but..." and I can't tell what Daniel's response - that twinkle in his eyes - meant, either. :)
The dialogue in that movie is just delicious in general. Lots of possibilities, meanings on different levels or just different meanings with word play. I'm pretty sure SOME of the dialogue doesn't have more than one meaning and doesn't include references beyond a particular scene or to any meta-level. Probably. Though I'm getting suspicious that maybe I haven't just noticed all the possibilities, yet. I've only seen the damned thing 3 times so far, and must have missed stuff...
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