Skyfall
Director: Sam Mendes
Writers: Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and John Logan, based on characters created by Ian Fleming
Producers: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli
Stars: Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Bérénice Marlohe, Albert Finney, Ben Whishaw
James Bond is 50. Not the man, but the film legacy. Skyfall, the 23rd recognized entry in this unparalleled series of action movies, is conscious (in a cheeky way, per tradition) about acknowledging its past, thrilling us in the present, and promising us a future. Self-aware humor has been in its DNA ever since Ian Fleming’s British Secret Service Agent 007, as played by Sir Sean Connery, left a corpse with the valet in Dr. No. Would the actor have been knighted if he hadn’t?
But what makes Skyfall a singular and standout entry in the franchise, perhaps one of its all-time best, is that it embraces the inherent power of its moment. Daniel Craig – who entered the tuxedo with Casino Royale – has thus far depicted a Bond in constant motion, transitioning into himself. Major aspects of the Bond mythos that we come to expect are still not here as his third adventure begins, although that slender young man from “Q” branch (Ben Whishaw) seems clever indeed.
But under the direction of Academy Award-winner Sam Mendes, and with similarly be-statued talents like Dame Judi Dench and Javier Bardem bringing their absolute best in front of the camera, Skyfall embraces the gravity of this anniversary more than movie fans might have asked it to; but it turns out, just as much as it needed to. It keeps the franchise genuinely alive and exciting underneath its martinis and fireballs. It’s as if you can see the clock hands gradually, dreadfully aligning, promising great noise and change. Will we have the Bond we know and love on the other side? Or do the times want him to be something different?
As we open, Bond is pursuing, with his usual violent aplomb, an enemy operative who has stolen a hard drive containing a list of undercover operatives embedded with terrorist organizations around the world. It is a dear thing to lose, and MI6’s spymaster M (since 1995’s Goldeneye, played by the subtle and fierce Dench), decides it’s worth paying a dear price to retrieve, ordering a fellow agent (played by 28 Days Later’s Naomie Harris) to shoot even with Bond in the way. Bond takes a bullet, takes a fall, and then takes a long, bitter holiday, while M types his obituary.
We have not seen this James Bond before – unshackled from duty; even, horror of horrors, unshaven! Mendes and Bond house writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, with a lift from John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator) understand our expectations of the character and get a charge every time they violate the image, like showing us cinema’s most famous drinker looking, for once, like the bottle won the fight.
Our villain this time is not out to get rich or conquer the world – he is a super-hacker named Silva (Bardem), who seems to have all the talent and resources to do these things but simply does not care to. But what interests him, what keeps him alive at all, is a need for revenge against M that burns and consumes him in ways that are more literal than you first think.
Bardem gives a mesmerizing performance from his first minutes on the screen, a tour-de-force that seizes upon 007’s finer tastes, alpha male profile, and license to kill and screw whom he pleases, and upends it with delirious exaggeration and mockery. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a Bond villain so capable of getting under the skin of 007; and it’s because he externalizes in so insidious a way the desires and resentments that must wrestle under those cool Tom Ford suits, behind Craig’s stone poker face. Small wonder that mirrors are a subtly-recurring piece of set dressing; Silva all-but announces himself as Bond’s leering fun house nightmare reflection.
This is the work of a real filmmaker, who takes us through the exotic locales and hidden spy stations we expect, but then takes us further down, to what is for James Bond a very personal hell of fire, solitude, and ghosts. We get to touch his past more than before, not just through the return of a beloved old piece of equipment from past films, but something far more personal. While we get our fill of impeccably-staged mayhem and lavishly-photographed beauty (Bérénice Marlohe plays the femme fatale that passes from one killer to another, and the camera sure appreciates her), this is really a story about choices – Bond’s choice to come in from the “cold” of his beach hideaway, and, much more fundamentally, the choices of M. Her fate is defined by the fact that she has made and steered lethal men like Bond her whole career, while ready to throw them away like an empty can anytime the mission might demand it.
Listen to how Bond calls her “Ma’am” while Silva calls her “Mommy” – the tiny distance between those two words is your movie. The story is fiendishly well-constructed to raise what is one of the most important emotional questions ever asked about James Bond – do the man and woman who conceived him and then were taken from his life by a climbing accident even count as his parents? As M confides with her usual unsparing candor – “orphans make the best recruits”.
These two characters, Bond and M, especially with Dench’s tenure in the role that richly-deserves the celebration it gets here, have a relationship now that gives her license to tell this hollowed-out man to his face that she took advantage of his youthful rage and loneliness and made him a weapon; and a disposable one at that. And Skyfall takes advantage of its fin de siècle positioning in the Bond franchise to hold a once-in-a-half-century reckoning not just of Bond the action hero, but Bond the man. And perhaps his true parents are right there with him when he goes to his personal hell – that cagey, morally-tainted spymaster, and that mysterious old man with the gun.