Old Dog, New Tricks: A Review of Skyfall
by BattleshipGreyGT (MI6 Community/Bond and Beyond) / The Silhouette (Commanderbond.net)
In Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig introduced a younger, arrogant, inexperienced version of Bond at the beginning of his career as a 00 agent. In Skyfall, we appear to find Bond later on in his career, older, wiser, and more experienced, in the middle of a mission gone horribly wrong. We open to a blast of the signature James Bond blast of brass with Bond's silhouette walking down a dark corridor towards the camera stepping out of the shadows into a slim ray of light illuminating his eyes. Straight from the get go, we can see that the imagery is more poetic than one would be accustomed to in a Bond film, and all time great cinematographer Roger Deakins makes his presence known. The pre-titles sequence quickly erases any doubts about Academy Award winning director Sam Mendes' ability to direct action. As Bond must recover a stolen drive containing the list of all NATO agents embedded undercover in terrorist organizations across the globe, he is thrust into a car chase which turns into a bike chase, which turns into a rooftop bike chase, and finally turns into a fistfight on top of a moving train. The sequence is colorful, invigorating, and kinetic, while offering tension through the juxtaposition of M (Dame Judi Dench) calling the shots in her office back in rainy London and Field Agent Eve (Naomie Harris) following alongside Bond in a Land Rover. The tension builds to a boiling point as M is forced to make the decision of her career. Order Eve to fire at the mercenary, Patrice (Ola Rapace), and risk hitting Bond or leave Bond to fight Patrice on the moving train and recover the drive. With a flinty toughness, M orders Eve to take the shot, which she reluctantly does, and misses as we watch Bond plummet from a 300 foot bridge into a river and Patrice disappear into the tunnel with the drive. We sit in agonizing silence, as M, Tanner, and MI6 staff await the outcome of the decision... "Agent down." The sky is falling. James Bond is dead.
Daniel Kleinman's title sequence is his best work yet. His nightmarish title sequence is eerie, elegant, and haunting with the best modern Bond theme and possibly the best Bond theme of all, Adele's Skyfall, poetically dancing with the images on screen. We see Bond's arm floating underwater being grabbed by a woman's hand pulling him into the realm of the dead. The morbid images of knives, graves, skulls, and blood are shown through the sequence, and during the first chorus we see a crumbling manor house, slowly revealing the quivering eyes of an adolescent Bond, hidden behind the stone walls. Bond continues exploring the cavernous depths of the underworld as Kleinman incorporates much of the film's symbolic imagery of shadows, graves, and mirrors, as Bond shoots at his reflection in a hall of mirrors.
While the plot synopsis and the opening of the film do suggest that the film is about recovering the stolen drive, the true story of the film arises when Gareth Mallory, the new chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee (Ralph Finnes) is introduced into the story. M is under scrutiny from Mallory for her questionable handling the Istanbul mission and the loss of a drive containing sensitive information which should not have been on record in the first place. M is told she will "voluntarily retire" and recieve the GCMG with full honours, but she's not having any of it. Now with her best agent dead, and with the lives of her other agents in danger, M must now fight to defend MI6 and her "out dated" way of doing things. Meanwhile, Bond is living in a beach side hut in Turkey looking haggard, disheveled, and unshaved, getting drunk, having sex and feeling sorry for himself after M's decision to risk sacrificing him for the good of the mission. Rarely ever do we get to see Bond off duty, and here we see the bored, depressed, and somewhat miserable Bond Fleming often wrote of. After MI6 is attacked by a shadowy figure from M's past, several agents are killed and Bond returns to England from his early retirement. Upon returning home, Bond finds his world has been turned upside down. His flat is sold, MI6 is in a new place, with new staff, and now he and M are a thing of the past. Bond is once again put through physical and psychological examinations, all of which he fails, but M lies to him, telling him he barely passed and proceeding to put him on active duty. The idea of a Bond who is aging and seems to have lost a step is an interesting concept, as we now have doubts about Bond's ability to perform in the field and operate at the level which he needs to survive. For once we actually fear that Bond may not be able to pull something off. Unlike his shoulder injury in TWINE that only popped up when it wanted to, we see Bond missing the target in his marksmanship test, collapsing after doing pull ups, struggling to hold on to the bottom of the elevator in Shanghai, panting after swimming laps in the pool, and his hand shakes when he takes aim with his pistol. It seems that Bond is not only rusty, but may even be a bit of a liability in the field. Awaiting the meeting with his new Quartermaster in the National Gallery, Bond stares at "The Fighting Temaraire", a painting depicting a grand old warship being hauled away to be used for scrap. The painting serves as an interesting parallel towards Bond and M's dilemma as they have become relics, now being phased out in favor for a new breed of Intelligence, such as Q (Ben Whishaw), who is a young computer expert who gives Bond a simple palm reading gun and a palm reader. Q Branch is no longer in the business of exploding pens, because in a world where every 16 year old has GPS, and all sorts of technology available to them on their cell phone or iPod, what practical gadget is there to give?
The Shanghai sequence may be the most visually striking action scenes in a Bond film or even in any film at all. In a maze of neon, shadows, and reflections, Bond's fistfight with Patrice is a hypnotic as it is one lingering shot as the two men beat and batter each other in silhouette, with only flashes of gunfire illuminating their faces for milliseconds. In Macau, a playful little scene once again reminds us of the theme of the old and the new, with Eve shaving Bond with a cutthroat razor, filled sexual tension that could be cut with a butter knife. The following scene is pure cinematic Bond glory. Bond is once again shaved, donning the tuxedo, triumphantly gliding through fiery dragon heads against a firework lit sky, with Komodo Dragon, Newman's instrumental take on Adele's theme, in the background. James Bond is back from the dead. The casino sequence feels like a deliberate nod to the James Bond of old. We are introduced to Severine (Berenice Marlohe), a haunted, vulnerable femme fatale working for Silva. As inexperienced as Marlohe is as an actress, she absolutely shines as Severine given her minimal screen time, masking fear with a false sense of confidence. Mendes throws in a slightly cheeky fight in a Komodo Dragon sequence towards the end of the casino sequence, giving a fun, playful nod to Live and Let Die but still managing to maintain the signature brutality of Craig-era fight sequences. In classic Bond fashion, Bond drops a one liner to Eve, and strides out of the casino with panache. Any doubts about Daniel Craig's ability to portray the classic elements of Bond's character are put to rest. Meanwhile, agents are being exposed on YouTube, and she and MI6 publicly come under scrutiny. Mallory informs M that the Prime Minister has ordered an inquiry which she must attend later in the week.
The franchise was lucky to have an actor as talented as Javier Bardem to play the villain of Skyfall, and I can confidently say that those talents are not put to waste. Silva's introduction is among some of the most memorable villain introductions in history. In one long take, Silva slowly walks from the back of the room towards the camera while telling a chilling story about cannibalistic rats, referring to he and Bond as the last two rats. Silva is about as over the top and flamboyant as any villain in the series. With bleached blond hair, blue eyes, strange facial features, and an outfit straight out of the 1970's, Silva's appearance is absolutely alien. Silva is quirky, with a bizarre onomatopoeial way of speaking and slightly goofy mannerisms, but manages to drip with charisma and come across as strangely likable. Silva and Bond engage in a homo-erotically charged mental chess game, where Silva begins to feel up Bond's face, body, and thighs, which will go down as one of the franchise's finest scenes. Speculations about Silva's sexuality are debatable, but one thing that is certain is that he uses sexuality (one of the many weapons in Bond's arsenal), against Bond in order to get in his head, but after suggesting that it is Bond's first homosexual encounter, Bond plays right along asking Silva what makes him think it's first time. Silva's otherness is once again reaffirmed by his playing of Charles Trenet's "Boum!" over the loudspeakers during a William Tell duel involving a shot glass on Severine's head. While the use of CGI is apparent, the production team did a great job creating "The Dead Island", an abandoned island modeled after Hashima Island in Japan.
When Silva is captured and sent to London we, along with Bond, hear Silva's backstory for the first time. A former MI6 agent working under M during the handover, was caught hacking by the Chinese, and M hands him over to the Chinese for six agents and a peaceful handover. Silva is tortured for months by the Chinese and is left only with his cyanide capsule in his molar. Silva bites the capsule, only to find it has become defective and the hydrogen cyanide ends up burning away all his teeth, the left side of his mouth and his left cheekbone. His grotesque and heartbreaking deformity is revealed when he removes his prosthetic mouth and cheekbone in front of Bond and M, once again, superbly done by the VFX team. What is truly fascinating about Silva is that he is a distorted fun-house mirror image of Bond. He and Bond were both top notch agents who were sacrificed for the greater good by M, who appears to both as a maternal figure. While M is a legitimate mother figure to Bond, Silva has a warped infatuation with her which deepens his plan past a simple revenge with he, Bond, and M entangled in a complex relationship between two rival siblings and their mother. With the information he had, he likely could have killed M long ago, but deliberately made sure to spare her during the MI6 explosion. It is his perverse love for her that gives him a new purpose to his life, rather than simple rage and thirst for revenge. Silva's being sent to London wasn't an accident, he wanted to be brought to her. He effectively uses the stolen drive as bait for MI6 to pursue and apprehend him, ironically using himself as a Trojan horse, bringing him into the heart of MI6 and reuiniting him once again with "mommy." Silva's plan isn't about exposing agents on YouTube, and neither is the film as a whole; it's about his suffering as he sees himself as a suffering son left to die by his own mother, and his desire to not only kill her but to hold her and look into her eyes before they both die together.
Silva uses his technological resources to hack MI6's computer system, after Q shows his youth by carelessly connecting Silva's laptop to their system via ethernet cable. After opening all the doors and escaping into the underground, with his embedded associates giving him a police outfit for disguise. Bond and Silva embark on a cat and mouse chase through the tube system into the catacombs of underground London. Mendes effectively uses juxtaposition and parallel action as Bond's pursuit of Silva is intercut with M's Board of Inquiry hearing, where she is grilled by the "bitchy politician", Clair Dowar (Helen McCrory). In a world of internet surveillance, predator drones, heightened transparency, and skilled computer hackers like Q, what use is there for clandestine men with guns going out into the field and risking their lives gathering intelligence? A case could be made that Bond, M, and their ideologies are a thing of the past and that there isn't a place for them in the new age of espionage. Perhaps the world no longer needs James Bond. In a speech that encapsulates the very essence of Skyfall, M takes her stand expressing that the world is no longer transparent, enemies are no longer easily identifiable, and do not have loyalties to nations. The new danger is in fact in the shadows, the places where most people do not and cannot see, and the place where Bond exists to protect the world from the enemies that are not known to us. In the most poetic scene in Bond's history (literally and figuratively), M quotes the ending of Lord Alfred Tennyson's "Ulysses" to the members of the hearing, while the poem is intercut with Silva and his men approaching the hearing, and Bond sprinting through the chaotic London streets to rescue her.
"We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
While they may be old fashioned and aging, they are not obsolete. It is through perseverance and power of will that Bond and M continue to fight in the shadows, defending the realm against the new threats posed against us. In the ensuing shootout, Bond must now defend MI6 in a more literal sense as Silva opens fire on the Inquiry, and all hell breaks lose. In this scene, we see Mallory's true colors show. In a act of heroism, he jumps in front of M, taking a bullet to the shoulder to protect her, and showing us that perhaps he isn't a pesky, spineless, bureaucrat, and that behind his charm and courtesy, lies a man of steel. Bond gets M off to safety and whisks her off in a company car. They have been playing catch up from the day this started and it's time the ball was in their court. Bond tells Q make an off-the-books plan to create an unauthorized false tracking signal that only Silva can see, but small enough where he does not smell a rat. In the process of this Q and Tanner are unexpectedly interrupted by Mallory, who recognizes what they are doing and commends them for it, telling them to carry on with their business, behind the Prime Minister's back. We're left thinking that maybe Mallory isn't so bad after all. Bond makes a stop to change vehicles since the company cars have trackers installed, so he switches to his personal car. The DB5 has a symbolic value in this film representing the Bond of old, and it's reveal is a true fist pumping moment for Bond fans, with the classic Bond theme and the roar of the DB5 in the background. Bond's car appears to have been upgraded by the old quartermaster since we last saw the DB5 in Casino Royale, with the usual gadgets, machine guns, and the ejector seat offering a nice bit of self referential humor.
The final act of the film is the most polarizing among fans, where the film departs from the conventional Bond structure and becomes a thing of his own. Bond and M set off to Skyfall lodge, an old manor house in the moors of Scotland, in which Bond grew up. One may wonder why Bond would take M to a such place, but because Silva's niche is the use and manipulation of computers and technology, the only way he can gain an advantage is dueling Silva in a familiar place, which is completely off the grid, and thus giving Silva no tactical advantage. In a brief scene Bond and M gaze out into the moors and M asks him about the death of his parents. Predictably, he's unwilling to talk, and silently prepares himself as he will be forced to relive with the childhood traumas he had pushed under the the table for most of his life. When we arrive at Skyfall lodge, Bond slowly walks through the empty rooms of his childhood home, and appearing to have memories of his childhood coming back to life. We then meet Kincade (Albert Finney), an old gamekeeper of Skyfall lodge, who became somewhat of a paternal figure after Jame's father, Andrew Bond, had passed. He shows M a priest hole on the property in which James hid after hearing of his parents passing. When he reemerged two days later, he was no longer a boy. For a moment, we and M hear about a side of Bond that not many know of: Bond the orphan boy, rather than Bond the international superspy. In their dialogue, we see glimpses of the humorous, warm relationship between Bond and Kincade which feels organic and wouldn't be hard to imagine a saucy young Bond verbally sparring with his old gamekeeper. Bond discovers that the lodge has been sold, and along with most of the guns in the gun room, severely diminishing the advantage of coming to Skyfall. They are only left with Andrew Bond's old hunting rifle, and a few sticks of dynamite and a knife, with Kincade once again expressing the films theme that, "Sometimes the old ways are the best." There is a bit of a Home Alone type vibe as we see the three of them rigging the house with improvised bombs and booby traps for the coming battle. Once the attack begins, they manage to hold off the first wave of attackers but M is left wounded. Silva then arrives in true over the top fashion, in a helicopter, blaring The Animals' "Boom Boom" with the fitting lyrics;
"Boom, boom, boom, boom,
Gonna shoot you right down,
Take you in my arms,
I'm in love with you..."
One moment that brought a tear to the eye of many men in the cinema was Silva's blowing up of the DB5, setting Bond over the edge and leading him to rig the mansion into a gigantic bomb, and running into the priest hole for safety. Although it may not seem to significant, this sequence holds a lot of symbolic value. By destroying the DB5, the film says "We recognize the past of the franchise, and while it was great, it's time to move forward into a new age of Bond." Similarly, Bond is forced to go back into that priest hole and conquer his demons, completely destroying Skyfall and everything it represented. The final showdown in the Skyfall chapel ranks up with Tracy's death as one of the most moving scenes in Bond's 50 year history. As Silva approaches the chapel he stops to look at Bond's parents' grave, signifying a family reunion of sorts. Silva finally reaches the moment he's lived for since his failed suicide. He can hold "mommy" in his arms, look into her eyes, and finish the task by killing them both with the same bullet. Bond intervenes before Silva reaches his goal by throwing a knife into his back and saying telling him "Last rat standing." before Silva collapses and dies. Unfortunately, Bond is too late, M falls into his arms as she bleeds out from her gunshot wound. Poetically, Bond will now lose his mother for the second time, just steps away from where his parents are burried. M says, "Well I got one thing right." expressing that through all the mistakes she'd made throughout her career, she got one thing right in the arrogant, "blunt instrument" she promoted in Casino Royale. In the most touching moment of the series, Bond closes her eyelids after she fades away, and kisses her on her forehead as he weeps. The film then cuts from the dark, firelit chapel to the bright rooftops of London where Bond stands heroically overlooking the empire which he defends.
It is a new day, not only for Bond, but for MI6... the "new" or rather the "old" MI6. Eve tells Bond she declined her offer to go back into the field, and decided to take a desk job after she realized she wasn't cut out for field work. When Bond mentions that they'd never had a formal introduction, Eve introduces herself as Eve Moneypenny, and the Bond theme begins to play as she sits down in a familiar looking office with a desk and a coat rack by the door. As Tanner emerges from behind the large padded leather door, a feeling that could not be described in words arises. Bond enters the room into the classic M's office with Gareth Mallory sitting behind the desk and a drawing of the former MI6 building behind him. After a long battle with proving his place in a modern world, Bond comes up victorious but only after his world was completely torn down, and been rebuilt and re-proven with himself back at the center, but surrounded by a new team with elements of the old and the new, headed by his new M, Mallory. Bond's journey in Skyfall also mirrors the journey of the series as a whole. After the franchise had lost it's way, and the disappointment of Quantum of Solace coupled with MGM's financial struggles, many Bond fans and moviegoers alike felt that maybe James Bond was a thing of the past, and that his best days are behind him. Skyfall proves that not only is James Bond relevant, but he's needed now more than ever, and while respect must be paid to the old guard, it is necessary to adapt and evolve in order to survive. On the wall of the new M's office is a painting of old warships, like in "The Fighting Temeraire" but this one rather, a new fleet lined up in the waters, ready and able to protect and defend. MI6 and James Bond will prevail.
All in all, Sam Mendes has made the best Bond film to date, combining the fun, beloved elements of classic Bond, with a new contemporary edge and at the same time integrating a thematic depth, and solidarity not yet seen in the Bond franchise. The team has once again raised the bar, this time making it evident that it is possible to not only make a great Bond film, but a great film in it's own right. With great performances, stunning cinematography, and an emotionally charged story, Skyfall will go down as one of the classics.
9.5/10
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