Ground-Breaker | Skyfall - Review

Skyfall celebrates fifty years of the James Bond film franchise with several witty, fun nods to 007’s cinematic history, whilst also delving further into the character’s past than any other film before it. Up until Casino Royale, Bond had always been, as M points out here, a man 'from the shadows', whose past we've known little about. Casino began by showing us how he earned his spurs as a 00 agent, the way Batman Begins showed us how Bruce Wayne became the Dark Knight. Skyfall continues in this vein to the point where it almost doesn’t feel like a Bond film, so far does it go from what we’ve seen before in an effort to honour the character's history as written by his creator, Ian Fleming. Of course, the non-negotiable givens are all here - the tuxedo, the action, the ladies, etc all woven in seamlessly. 

The last act, where Bond takes M to his family pile in the Scottish highlands in order to draw the heretofore technologically superior villains to an isolated location, feels like a real departure for the series, particularly in the eeriness of the location and Thomas Newman's accompanying score. Skyfall, like most Bonds before it (even Craig's earlier two films), still has a ground-based facility being destroyed but with the twist that this is Bond's own childhood home, even though, as he admits to himself, 'I always hated this place.' 

It's just cruel, then, to have M - James' surrogate mother - die in his arms, a few feet away from the grave of his biological mum, Monique Delacroix Bond, killed in a skiing accident with Andrew, James' father, as mentioned by 006 in GoldenEye and, indeed, by M in Bond's obituary at the end of Fleming's You Only Live Twice. It's weird to gain this much insight into Bond's past in a 007 film but then, perhaps, after 50 years, it's about time. It makes for a better anniversary film than Die Another Day, anyway. In the end, however, the story comes full circle to a point where the viewer will be reminded of classic Bond movies.

The juxtaposition between old and new is handled much better in this film than in DAD, the fortieth anniversary Bond movie, which also shares its writers, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, with this one, along with John Logan. DAD merely made over-the-top attempts at modernity (Madonna, flashy editing and too much CGI) whilst squeezing in references to all the previous films, such as stuffing Q’s workshop full of Bond’s old gadgets. What, so Brosnan’s Bond is the same one who used the Thunderball jetpack? This only made 007 seem more of an anachronism in a contemporary world, where he’d be pushing eighty if he’d been around since the 60’s. ‘A relic of the cold war’, as Judi Dench’s M put it in GoldenEye. 

Skyfall also uses this trick by bringing in the Connery-era Aston Martin, now in Daniel Craig’s hands but we know that Craig’s Bond is a post - 9/11 kinda secret agent, not a cold war one, so it’s a bit odd that he’s using the car from Goldfinger (complete with ejector seat, which I assume Bond had installed by Q Branch after winning the car in a Poker match during Casino Royale). Skyfall’s gadgets are so down to earth that Bond even moans about their quotidian nature. ‘What did you expect,’ the new, younger Q (Ben Whishaw) deadpans, ‘an exploding pen? We don't really go in for that sort of thing anymore.’ The fact that Q is now Bond’s junior rams home the plot point of 007 possibly being past his prime.

Although Daniel Craig is, in reality, the same age as Moore and Brosnan when they first took on Bond, he is ‘an old dog’ in Skyfall,. The events of Casino Royale are long past, although, in the real world, it has been six years, perhaps this is a lifetime in Skyfall's spy world.  Espionage is now, as Ralph Fiennes’ Mallory puts it, ‘a young man’s game’, with no room for dinosaurs like M and Bond, who, touchingly, stick by each other here to prove their relevance in a changing world that wants to leave them in its wake. The villain of the piece, Javier Bardem's Silva (the name perhaps a subtle nod to metallically-themed Bond titles, Goldfinger, etc) serves to make this point clearer as a vengeful figure from M’s past, a man who personifies the old world from where Bond and M (Judi Dench) hail and so they are the only ones really able to stop him. He has shades of GoldenEye’s Alec Trevelyan, as well as Ed Harris’ disgruntled Colonel from The Rock but without any megalomaniacal ideas about crashing stock markets or blowing up cities. His plan is more personal, which is exemplary of how this film continues in the same vein as Craig’s previous ones, by eschewing typical Bond film tropes for a grittier, more interesting plot and style, marshalled by director Sam Mendes, who, like Marc Forster with Quantum Of Solace, is another unusual choice of Bond director but a far more successful one this time.

Yet, given this is a spy film, it doesn’t stray too far from the trodden path, with plot points reminiscent of other, similar films (isn't the stolen hard drive like the Macguffin in the first Mission: Impossible?) as well as BBC’s Spooks, which featured rogue agents seeking revenge on their old spy boss. Where Skyfall's story really breaks new ground is in terms of turning Bond’s world upside down and delving into his psyche like never before, making this the first post-modern Bond film. It’s also one of the prettiest, with regular Mendes cinematographer Roger Deakin on hand to deliver some very atmospheric scenes. One in particular is a fistfight between Bond and Patrice (Ola Rapace), who are cast in silhouette by a huge screen backdrop of an animated floating jellyfish, punctuated by the occasional muzzle flash from the villain’s sniper rifle. The hand-to-hand combat in this film is top-notch. It's hard to believe 007 failed his physical test after coming back to duty, following his near-death experience at the start.

Bringing a ray of light or two through the gloom is the return of the Bond one-liner, more overt here than subtler zingers like 'I'm the money' … 'every penny of it.' from Casino. Here, Craig nicely delivers lines like 'it's a waste of good Scotch' and 'I got into some deep water'. Although the earlier clanger, 'it's the circle of life', after dispatching some henchmen with the help of some hungry Komodo Dragons, just sounds wrong, even though Craig gives it his best shot. Near the end, Moneypenny's, 'I'm sure we'll have some more close shaves together' is so loaded, it even prompts an almost full Roger Moore eyebrow-raise from Bond, putting me in mind of an Austin Powers-style (barely) double entendre.

Skyfall is one of the best Bonds; bigger in intention and scope than the lacklustre Quantum, it doesn't quite match Casino Royale, which did have the novelty of being Craig’s initial Bond film, as well as being based on the first Ian Fleming novel. Skyfall successfully celebrates James Bond’s aptly golden anniversary (i.e. Goldfinger, Golden Gun, GoldenEye) by creating a good balance between honouring his cinematic and literary past, whilst keeping bang up to date and focusing a (golden)eye on the future.