Skyfall

Skyfall 2012 U.K. (143 minutes) directed by Sam Mendes; written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan, based on Ian Fleming’s James Bond; director of photography, Roger Deakins; edited by Stuart and Kate Baird.

Skyfall is a heck of a good action thriller that gets back to basics to reboot the James Bond legend.

The latest Bond movie is unusual in that while it plays on a theme of doing things ‘the old-fashioned way,’ it also considers whether public and private organizations are better off when they rely on sophisticated technical means to do humans’ jobs.

Cash-strapped governments no less than profit-plush private enterprise revel in each technical marvel that lets them retire another idiosyncratic and expensive pair of boots pounding pavement—until those boots come pounding to their rescue. 

Nor does this fifty-year-old franchise’s latest entertainment pause on a boring plateau before the dénouement. The usual pattern would be that a fast-moving plot gets needlessly sidetracked by the exposition either of a romance going nowhere or the bad guy’s equally futile and rococo scheme to do away with Bond. More than two hours of this movie scoot by with scarcely a stop for a breath. 

However, the reviews are mixed. Anthony Lane noted that it is a good movie, just not a good Bond movie. This of course depends on what one means by ‘Bond movie.’

Ian Fleming’s novels are the pulp fiction cousins of Mickey Spillane’s brood, the former informed by the harsh realities of Britain’s receding empire during the Second World War and the Joseph Stalin-era Cold War.

Fleming remade the doughty gentleman soldier of an earlier generation of thriller writers, such as John Buchan’s Richard Hannay of The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), into a tough, capable, and solidly middle class male fantasy. He gave Bond a pastiche of knowing the value of things for which the target audience could be relied upon to know the prices. Fleming’s Bond is a Mike Hammer with a BBC accent.

In the hands of moviemakers, Sean Connery and the Bond screenwriters and directors cut capers round the male fantasy. They created the polished, wise-cracking lady-killer and the female and technical toys without which no Bond picture could be complete. Connery’s Bond was a tough act to follow. At best, his successors have given the fantasy their own distinct flavor.

Craig’s Bond is closer to Fleming’s original, a capable killer with more pluck than polish. Skyfall, Craig’s third crack at the role, is his best, after a promising beginning with Casino Royale (2006) and the disappointing and morose Quantum of Solace (2008).

In Skyfall, a suspected act of international terrorism turns out to be the handiwork of a former MI6 ‘double 0’ operative seeking revenge against M (Judy Dench), his former boss, for ‘giving him up’ to the Chinese.

Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a perverse, cackling bottle blonde roué with dental issues, is a master computer hacker. His ‘enterprise’ apparently made him a liability to MI6 and the British government in the run-up to the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. Back at large, Silva turns his devious tradecraft against his former employer.

Meanwhile politicians at Whitehall conduct high profile inquiries into the relevancy and cost effectiveness of the secret services. Bond, trying to get a line on the hacker, tracks the assassin who tried to kill him in the opening sequence in Istanbul to the blue neon, other-worldly instant megalopolis which is the new Shanghai.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that while Bond watches the assassin set up to shoot a man identified as a ‘Shanghai art collector,’ we see the target appraising Amedeo Modigliani’s La Femme à l'Éventail (Lunia Czechowska) (1919). This painting was one of several masterpieces stolen from the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in May 2010, none of which have been recovered.

Bond subsequently encounters Sévérine (Bérénice Lim Marlohe), a mysterious Eurasian beauty with a checkered past and a Beretta strapped to her thigh, in a floating fleshpot in Macau, the Chinese Las Vegas. In Mondo Bond this usually means an express ticket to the big bad wolf. Enter Silva.

Before long, Silva brings the whole show home to old-fashioned London.

M and MI6 get political support from old fashioned Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee and a former British Army officer with field intelligence experience in Northern Ireland.

The new Q, whom Ben Whishaw plays gamely as a callow computer geek, seems more like a throwback to the Ultra people at Station X at Bletchley Park. At outset, Q supplies Bond with two items: a high tech Walther PPK pistol which only the authorized user’s palm print can activate to fire, and a simple radio transmitter that Q branch could have issued in Goldfinger (1964). This will be all that Bond needs.

In a sense, using a straight razor to stand for doing things the old-fashioned way seems to translate as applying William of Occam’s shaving implement to get to ‘the British way.’ The dénouement is right out of Buchan.

Bond leaves behind the flash and dash to spirit away M as bait to the Scottish highlands in the iconic silver-birch gold 1964 Aston Martin DB5 (which first appeared in Goldfinger), to draw Silva to his home turf. The Scottish highlands prove to be good country for old men, especially a gillie like Kincade (Albert Finney), though perhaps a bit too hot for one old lady.

Director Sam Mendes ties his movie with a bow where many Bond films start: a fresh Bond with a new Miss Eve Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), every bit as bright and sexy as the young Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny from 1962-85), outside the oak of M’s inner chambers; a new assignment awaits within.

All of which leaves no doubt that JAMES BOND WILL BE BACK: orbis non sufficit.