Skyfall: reviewed (and spoiler free)

Skyfall Review [Spoiler-Free]

by Griff Williams

I went into Skyfall with cautiously high expectations, and I mean really high and really cautious. Casino Royale was, in my opinion, the best Bond movie (indeed, in my opinion, the only good Bond movie ever); it was mature, suspenseful and visceral, somehow managing to transcend the ‘classic’ series of movies and the obviously-inspirational Bourne trilogy to form possibly the finest spy flick of the decade. When Quantum of Solace came out, I was expecting even more from it, and boy did it fail to deliver. Instead of a broken man’s tale of revenge we got a confused, unmotivated Daniel Craig wandering through the plot while some French bloke tries to steal everyone’s water. I began to worry that Casino Royale was the exception to the rule, and that the franchise would never be able to bottle its lightning again.

It’s not often that I am so glad to be proven wrong. Now, fair warning, Skyfall is not as good as Casino Royale, but it’s still damned fine and well worth the seeing. Gone is the overarching meta-plot of the previous two films – no super-secret cabal of criminal masterminds, no mention of dearly departed Vesper – and instead we’re given a brutal, beautiful character piece focussing, of all people, on M. In many ways, Skyfall is her story: following a mission gone wrong, M is pressured to resign as head of MI6, a situation exacerbated when a rogue agent from her past implements a meticulous plan to bring the organisation and her to their knees. It’s a surprisingly intimate story, taking place for the most part in the UK, lending its scenes a close-to-home weight that most other Bond films have lacked.

Bond

Just because M is the story’s focus doesn’t mean 007 gets to slouch off. Indeed, Skyfall and Craig himself put a great deal of effort into portraying Bond in a way never handled in the movies before. Having been shot and left for dead when the opening’s mission goes horribly wrong, Skyfall’s Bond is a wounded man. Physically, his wound has left him weak and incapable of his usual feats of violence. Emotionally, he’s just beginning to realise his own expendability in the eyes of his superiors and it’s unsettled him. Craig carries it off excellently: every public display of strength and suave feels like a barely-maintained façade, while in private Bond’s weakness and growing doubt simmers just below the surface. He doesn’t exactly capture the raw, bleeding man from the end of Casino Royale, but he still gives us a new angle to Bond: bruised, sore and weary. The final act of the film especially shows Craig at his best: when the titular Skyfall is revealed, we get our first real insight into the Bond before MI6. There are no answers offered about his genesis, only hints and impressions given from Craig’s restrained, self-repressing acting, but it’s something no other Bond actor could have pulled off.

If there is one complaint to be made, it’s the return to the old-era slew of quips and puns; to say it often jars with the character and mood would be an understatement, and the injection of (bad) humour feels forced in many of the more emotional scenes. One-liners are about as dated as Sean Connery.

M

I’ve often been disappointed that M never gets more than an expository role in Bond films. She exists to set up the plot and then unleash 007 upon the world and all its female inhabitants. Skyfall breaks the mould, structuring its entire storyline upon her past, her personality and her sins. From the very start, we get to see why M is head of MI6: in the heat of an operation she’s intelligent, resilient and, when she needs to be, singularly ruthless. Dame Judi has always played a hard-edged M, locking horns with Bond as much as relying on him, and giving that relationship added screen time makes this film a success. It’s a matronly dynamic between the two: they don’t always see eye to eye, or even like one another, but when under fire they will close ranks and fight tooth-and-nail to protect one another. And man, is M under fire in this movie: under investigation by her own superiors as MI6 is assaulted by a ghost from her past, Dench’s performance isn’t just more-of-the-same, but adds a whole new defiant, resolute aspect to an M losing control of the situation. There’s even a touching scene towards the end of M’s vulnerability, where the stress of the job and crisis threaten to break her, and Dench gives us a glimpse into the real humanity behind the mistress of Military Intelligence.

Silva

Bond villains are often hit-and-miss. Casino Royale’s Le Chiffre certainly had a charisma to him, but in a hyper-realistic, brave-new-world Bond film his whole haemolacria shtick was a cartoonish anachronism that would have been better left out. Still, he was a damn sight better that Quantum’s Greene, who was about as wet and limp as a freshly boned fish.

Skyfall’s rogue agent Silva far outshines his two predecessors, and fully realises the potential of an MI6 agent with a grudge so squandered all the way back in Goldeneye. Javier Bardem manages to slide between a sinister, giggling maniac with a ferocious intellect and lethal joie de vivre and the wounded, betrayed soul beneath. Some might say that the performance sails too close to overly-camp and a little bit hammy, but to be honest I found it a perfect counterpoint to Craig’s wry, steely-eyed Bond; two sides of the same coin, through a mirror darkly, call it what you will. Even if you don’t end up thinking so, there’s a truly unsettling scene just after the halfway point that will force you to radically reassess this manic antagonist that owes its power to top-notch effects and Bardem’s acting chops. Never has 007 had a more sinister, threatening and, in the end, sympathetic adversary.

Supporting Cast

One of the impressive feats of Skyfall is that its cast never feels wasted. If a character is present in a scene it’s not simply for set dressing; everyone has their place, everyone has their purpose. The two honourable mentions for this category, however, have to go to Ben Wishaw and Ralph Fiennes. The former brings back the dubious character of Q and manages to provide us with more than just the comedy relief boffin/purveyor of plot devices from the older films. This new, youthful, wunderkind Q carries hints of the Anonymous movement – a bright young mind capable of laying the world at his feet with just a keyboard and router – and although his computer skills err towards CSI-levels of techno-wizardry, the brains-versus-brawns rapport he has with Bond helps flesh the new Q out beyond the obligatory ‘try to bring it back in one piece, 007’.

Ralph Fiennes is also on top form, possessing the necessary grit and authority to carry off the role of M’s superior, Mallory. His arc is a fairly predictable one, starting off as the not-really-antagonist who gets in M’s way with talk of resignation and retirement, but who joins forces with the main cast by act three and reveals he’s not such an arsehole after all. But it’s not so much the destination as the journey with Fiennes, and his acting gives the sensation that although Mallory’s a bit of a superior tosser, there’s a hint of iron and intelligence that justifies him being a superior tosser.

Visuals

Skyfall is something of a curve-ball when it comes to visuals. Sure, there are the occasional sweeping vistas and garishly opulent environments (both courtesy of China – does that tell you something?), but for the most part the film relies on familiar sights: the Thames waterfront, Whitehall, the Scottish Highlands. This home-turf setting helps give the film its thematic atmosphere of a clandestine assault on Britain and the protagonists being forced to protect their nearest and dearest: these aren’t far-off locales getting shot up, but places we see and hear about on a daily basis. The Highlands deserve special mention for the isolating, oppressive atmosphere they give to the climax’s build-up.

Oh, and we’re back to the usual silhouetted women and guns/knives/other phallic objects for the opening number. Am I the only person that actually liked Casino Royale’s card-suit inspired madness?

Concluding Thoughts

There are some unsettling elements to Skyfall. There’s quipping, the return of a character who really should have stayed in the old franchise (it’s not Q, and I’m not telling – go see for yourself) and an overall sense that the new series is gravitating back towards the tropes of the old. Maybe someone thought it’d be interesting to slowly show Craig’s Bond transforming into Connery’s. That certainly would be interesting to watch; as interesting as a slow motion, mid-air collision. And just as painful too.

But for every minor misstep Skyfall makes, it has a dozen well-placed steps to redeem itself. This is by far and away the best cast ever assembled for a Bond film, and there’s an effortlessly enjoyable quality to observing all the actors working together and off one another with industrial precision. The story never loses pace and shirks a lot of the tired action-film clichés for some interesting new set pieces (ever wanted to see what happens when you cross James Bond with Home Alone? – it’s more awesome than you’d think).

The greatest irony is that the one supreme reason I’d recommend you get up and go to the cinema to see Skyfall right now is the one thing I cannot say in this review. So please, trust me when I say this is a landmark Bond film, and if you have been a fan of the series at any point over the past two decades, you owe it to yourself to go see this corker.

Griff Williams will return….