Skyfall

 cinema, Skyfall (2012) film

As I watched, for a while into the film I began to think I'd have nothing to write a review about. It wasn't that it was bad, it was fine, just fine. At the end I easily summed it up as 'good in parts, disposable entertainment,' but at least I had found much more to write about by that time. To write a review you need things to think about, and much of the plot was the usual brand of 'seen it all before' action fare. After the film there's little to cogitate over, but enough to remember, that I'll do my best to get across my feelings on this, the third Daniel Craig Bond film. But there it is: when your first film is the best Bond it's difficult to drive an upward curve. In a way, 'Quantum of Solace' had an easy time of it, since any weakness in story or character were instantly attributed to its troubled writing period or the fact that it couldn't be improved during shooting due to the strikes in the industry. So I went into 'Quantum' with low expectations and came out thinking it was alright and wondering what all the fuss was about. A second viewing made me realise that it was a very average film, whereas repeated viewings of 'Royale' made me want to rate it higher.

After 'Quantum' I was no longer bothered about the next Bond film, and with the extended time it took to arrive I didn't have any lingering inertia from 'Royale' to make alter my feelings one way or the other. Before 'Royale' I'd never even considered going to the cinema to see a Bond, so I'd slipped back into that pre-'Royale' apathy over it. But then there was all the talk of it celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the first in the series, 'Dr. No,' back in 1962, and it was talked up as being a really good instalment, bringing in elements of the history of the man and having a much improved villain to oppose, all combining to pique my interest. Having been disappointed on many occasions when others have lauded a new film, only for me to watch it and find it okay, nothing more, I kept a level expectation, neither high nor low, but it did make me want to at least see the film in the cinema. So I did, and it turned out to be nothing more, nothing less than expected: a suitably watchable film that was certainly not a disappointment (like 'The Bourne Legacy'), more like an average to above average blockbuster (like 'Mission: Impossible 4'), and certainly not on a par with my film of the year, 'The Dark Knight Rises.'

I will say this for it, it had a much more memorable adversary than 'Quantum' - can you remember him? If you haven't seen it recently, I'll warrant you can't. Silva was a defined personality, an old-fashioned Bond enemy (somewhat making up for the lack of Oddjob, a classic baddie I'd heard rumours about a few years ago, and which was at the back of my mind, causing me to wonder whether he was one of the 'bodyguards' of the French girl, who gets eaten by CGI Komodo dragons!), he made an impact with his opening monologue about rats, had the mad hair and delightfully simple physical disfigurement (like Le Chiffre and the classic Bond villains of old), one that had been indirectly caused by M, in a way. Because, at the risk of citing many films in this genre, it's another one about a former operative gone bad. He had reason to, after being tortured and attempting to use his cyanide pill to escape the agony only to find it ate up his insides, but left him alive enough to want revenge on his former boss. Presumably he went a little bit mad thanks to this episode, which is why he goes about things in the usual superfluous super-villain way - why just hire someone to kill M when you can do it yourself in a convoluted and fiendishly clever way? Why blow up a house with a gunship's missiles when you can lob little grenades in and chase her across the barren Scottish countryside? Mind you, he had help from the complete ineptness of the British police who can't protect high-ranking members of the government from three bad guys with guns! Not sure the Metropolitan Force will feel quite so patriotic about this films as others do...

The biggest pointer to Silva's deranged nature was that when it came to it he couldn't kill her, and instead wanted her to pull the trigger and send a bullet through both their brain's at the same time! Which leads me to the biggest (you could say only, but for a minor sleight of hand flourish at the end. Oh alright, the dark-skinned agent who helps or hinders Bond through the film turns out to be Miss Moneypenny), surprise: Judi Dench's M is killed. Wow! That I did not see coming, and it's a credit to my ability to avoid spoilers that I never even sensed a whiff of such a twist. You think the main 'iconic' characters are safe, and the only deaths are of agents we meet in the film we're watching at the time or mindless goons for Bond to dispatch dispassionately, but not M… I can see why they did that, Dench ageing, as they all are - if a theme can be taken from the story it is age, years and history, the right kind of sentiment considering this is a franchise that began in the early 1960s. I didn't buy Bond suddenly becoming a weaker agent just because he got shot and fell in some water (so he can drink in a bar with a scorpion for a friend - must admit I never noticed the product placement this time, whereas n 'Royale' it jumped out at you). Suddenly he's a lesser man, but that particular theme didn't play out strongly enough, as if they weren't happy to go the whole hog and make him a truly vulnerable person physically as they made him emotionally in 'Casino Royale.'

Dench and Craig have aged, and there was a sadness in seeing the departure of the M of the modern era, the only actor I associate with the part, since I'm not heavily into the history of the films - I've seen most of them, but Dench was the one of my lifetime, or that part of my lifetime when I began to be aware of Bond, whether through people talking about the Brosnan films or playing the seminal 'Goldeneye 007' on the Nintendo 64, and later, 'The World Is Not Enough' on the same. I like her from other things and I remember her, so to have an era come to an end with her passing the mantle onto Ralph Fiennes was a sentimental moment for me. It was one of the things that worked so well about 'Royale,' that, even though they were rebooting and going for a new cast and realistic style, they retained the Brosnan M. It was something to provide continuity despite being a new world. It wasn't even that she had a glorious death, went out in a bang or saved someone, she just got hit during the firefight attack on Bond's ancestral home, and is too pigheaded to tell anyone until it's too late, dying in Bond's arms. I liked that he was allowed to shed a tear over her, as she's the main influence on his Bond (aside from Vesper), just as I was glad when he showed concern for a fellow agent at the beginning, wanting to save that man's life rather than fulfil his mission and follow the baddies (though why a hard drive would have all the names of all the undercover agents in one place is a plot contrivance you have to politely ignore).

When they do that, they add depth to the character. No more so than with the delving into his backstory, something I did know was going to happen. We find out his parents names, see their graves, visit his family home (the Skyfall of the title - neither an impressive reveal or a crushing disappointment), meet the old gamekeeper that looked after him (shades of Alfred, Bruce Wayne's butler?), with Albert Finney muscling in on another action hero franchise, arriving in the third film as the guy who was there when it all began, a similar situation to 'The Bourne Ultimatum,' only that time you could tell which accent he was going for. This time I thought he was playing it American, then English, then Scottish, and I'd have thought better of such an accomplished performer as he, unless it were simply my ears playing up. The old Aston Martin makes its comeback, proving useful, in a 'the bad guys better stand right in front of it or it won't be able to shoot them' kind of way, but as I say, I'm not steeped in Bond lore, I was quite happy for them to reboot the series in 2006 as, though I'd seen most of the films, I wasn't attached to them as some people are.

That stretches to people such as Q or Moneypenny being reintroduced into this new version, and actually it took me out of the film a little because I had forgotten this is an updated Bond, so that what went before didn't happen in this 'universe.' Not that I minded those characters, they were fine, and actually, in the previous two films I enjoyed Felix Leiter's appearances, so technically I'm all for people of the old-school showing up (still I wait with bated breath for Jaws!). They even joke about the changes compared with old Bond, with Q wittily pointing to the fact that this one doesn't have the luxury of gadgets, just simple tools, nothing elaborate. It kind of makes you wonder what the point of having Q in this, was, but he had to be the brain which Silva manipulated with the computer wizardry, though again, it could have been any MI6 technician and made as much sense. But they were going for a deliberate referencing of old Bond, there were probably so many references in there that only an aficionado would spot them all (I got Silva's wine was from 1962!).

There were things to like (none more so than the fact that you could actually see what was going on, with a distinct recoil away from shaky-cam dramatics) - the bike chase over the rooftops, part of the opening gambit; the attack on the house at the end, Silva's wild hair flying in the hot wind blasted by the inferno behind him; the desperate ramble through the Scottish countryside, evoking some old Sherlock Holmes tale (I half expected it to be the equivalent of the Grimpen Mire, Silva being sucked in as he chases revenge, except it played out on an ice); some of the artistic direction; the short chase through the London Underground… But I was never left wowed, never felt I'd seen something I never had before, rarely empathised with the characters or felt I knew them (the women's parts certainly harked back to the 60s considering the amount they got to do - a surprise for me was how quickly the French girl gets killed off, though M had more involvement than ever before, so there's an argument that that balanced it out). I've seen a hero and villain atop a speeding train ('Mission: Impossible'), I've seen a train fall, crashing through walls ('Batman Begins'), countless times the main bad guy has been locked in a transparent cell ('Avengers Assemble' as the most recent), telling his tragic story and smugly observing his captors before cunningly escaping to wreak revenge. When I saw the chase in the Underground I was hoping it was going to try and top the incredible parkour sequence from 'Royale' which, more than any other scene told you who Bond was, or who this Bond is. But it petered out, and I can understand why they wouldn't try to top such a stunning cinematic stunt.

The good thing about the villain is that he isn't a physical match for Bond, he's an intellectual superior that plays MI6, but he's a little too Joker-ish in his lack of real longterm motives. This does prevent a conventional fistfight between him and Bond in the final minutes, which is how so many action films end, to varying degrees of success. Bond got his fighty stuff in with Patrice, the hitman/terrorist/whatever he was. I actually thought he was going to be the bad guy! Until he slipped out of Bond's clutches and fell from a skyscraper. There were things about Silva I didn't appreciate, an attempt to take Bond down an entirely different and unexplored route which I can imagine will one day become the norm, but which I do not consider suitable for either the character or the films. But that's another issue, and it didn't prevent me from accepting the film, for the most part, as a reasonable continuation of the famous secret agent. It was a minor improvement on 'Quantum,' but almost imperceptibly so, and I remain indifferent at either Q or Moneypenny joining the 'cast.' I will say that I approved of Fiennes as Mallory, a character you're obliged to feel well disposed to so his promotion to the new M feels right. But I can't agree with the general mood that this is the best Bond ever, that Craig is undeniably the best actor to play the role, or that it can only get better from here on.

Well, maybe I can agree that it can only be on the up, but more from the standpoint that it was different to 'Casino Royale' and would have benefitted from being more like it. The theme song was fine, but again, cannot eclipse the epic 'You Know My Name' from you-know-what, but at least there was an impression of more invention in the title sequence, compared with the usual female bodies sliding across the screen - I wanted more of that illustrated visual style, as best depicted in, well, the film I keep mentioning. The Bond theme didn't ring out as strongly as it does in… that film, I almost never felt the nostalgia they were talking about coming through, and so I think I've returned to that level of take-it-or-leave-it sentiment that I used to think of when I thought of Bond. Despite all that, thinking and writing about it has made me appreciate those things that stuck in the mind, and while it doesn't leave a lasting impression, and it is just another samey Bond film, I would consider seeing the next one. And that's more than I can say about Bourne.

**