Some people absolutely love the James Bond franchise. They’ve seen every movie, they do marathons on holidays, just the first few opening notes of the Bond music sends chills up their spines, the whole deal. I’ve never been one of these people. I’m not sure how many of the Bond films I’ve seen, but it’s not the majority of the now 23 official entries. I’ll watch bits and pieces of them on cable, I’ll find one I like more than the others every once in a while, but, in general, the catch phrases, the gadgets, the sleazy puns that the girls get as names... none of it does all that much for me.
Why bring this up? Because the latest entry in the Bond franchise, Skyfall, seems to be pretty concerned with the history of James Bond on film and how it co-exists with the modern, stripped down take on the character we’ve been getting ever since Daniel Craig became Bond in Casino Royale. Personally, I appreciated the way Casino Royale stripped many of the cheesier elements away from the franchise. But the new approach still didn’t manage to make me a fan of the character. It was just enough to make for a decent though generic spy movie, and the potential risk it took in upsetting hardcore Bond fans didn’t seem worth the added grittiness. With Skyfall, however, we might have found a perfect mix of new and old. Still gone are the eye roll-worthy names and the over the top technologies and world-ending scenarios, but returning are a couple of characters who Bond fans have likely been missing, and a little bit of the chauvinist swagger that sets the franchise apart. If Skyfall didn’t feel the need to wink at the audience by making jokes about the cheesiness of some of the older films and by trotting out iconic Bond props, I would say that it hit the perfect tone.
But, aside from its place in the greater franchise, how does Skyfall fare as a film standing on its own? Pretty damned well, actually. Over the course of his career, Sam Mendes has made a fairly eclectic mix of films, but two things have always linked together everything he’s done: focus on character and gorgeous photography. Skyfall is no exception to that rule. Here is a film that brings Judi Dench’s M character to the forefront in a way that’s never been done before, that digs deeper into Bond’s past than we’re used to going, and that hired Roger Deakins (No Country For Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James) to operate the camera. It all adds up to a fine Sam Mendes film, indeed.
But, perhaps more importantly, Skyfall also works as a great James Bond film, which is clear right from its opening scene: a motorcycle chase over the rooftops of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. It’s an epic in scope set piece that features thrilling stunt work and stunning photography rather than the hollow digital trickery and dizzying spatial continuity that you usually get from sequences like this. And it’s a cold opening that ends with Bond taking a high powered round to the chest, flying off the top of a train, over a bridge, and into the icy depths of a river. That’s a pretty great way to get you interested in where a movie is going.
After the opening action sequence we get the opening title sequence; an aspect of filmmaking that’s probably more important to Bond movies than any other sort of film. Mendes has created one that’s trippy, gorgeous to look at, and that sets the tone of dread and doom that lingers over the rest of the film. Bond is firmly established as being injured right off the bat. This isn’t the unstoppable secret agent that you’re used to. He’s off his game, has had his ass handed to him, and is unlikely to get out of this latest adventure alive. From the very beginning, Skyfall establishes big stakes, it hammers home how dangerous things are for MI6, and it makes it clear that the characters aren’t getting through this film without having their status quo reshuffled in a major way. In this respect, Skyfall feels far more urgent and important than most Bond movies, which helps separate it from the pack as one of the best and most memorable entries in the franchise to date.
We have to get back to talking about the photography though. Nothing separates Skyfall from the other Bond movies—and most movies that you’ll see this year, period—more than how gorgeous it is to look at. No James Bond film before has ever been this much of a visual treat. Literally every frame that Deakins and Mendes have shot could be framed and hung up on a wall. Just when you think that an action sequence taking place in a Shanghai high rise—that’s full of neon lights and huge video walls reflecting against a labyrinth of glass—is going to be the most dazzling in the film, suddenly Bond is swept off to a Macau casino, and you can almost picture a conversation between Deakins and Mendes that went something like, “We need the glowing dragons to be bigger! The lantern people sent us a thousand lanterns instead of a hundred? Fuck it! Put lanterns everywhere! Everywhere!” The results are an otherworldly, luminous scene that sticks with you long after the film ends. When editors are putting together Bond montages from this point forward, they’re likely to skew heavy with iconic images from Skyfall.
Given the show-stopping nature of the visuals, all of the actors essentially get put in supporting roles. But that’s not to say that there aren’t any good performances here. One might think that a James Bond movie would put all of the spotlight on Daniel Craig, but it’s actually Judi Dench’s M that gets the bulk of the focus. She’s the one making the big decisions, she’s the one whose choices dictate the direction that the plot takes. Here Bond is just a blunt instrument, one of the tools in M’s arsenal, and the way she views her country and her agency’s role in the changes Britain is going through makes up the meat of the character drama. M is a pragmatist, the one who’s always asked to put emotions aside and make the hard decisions, and this movie gives Dench a great chance to show off what a hardass she can be.
The other side of the coin is Javier Bardem’s villain, Silva. He represents the collateral damage, the consequences of M’s—and by extension Britain’s—never ending battle with the shadowy forces that threaten queen and country. Sometimes the few get sacrificed for the good of the many, and being a failed abortion who’s representing that few, Silva is pissed. This gives Bardem the chance to go big with the character, and if there’s any situation in which Javier Bardem is pretty much guaranteed to be effective, it’s when he’s been given the chance to chew scenery. His Bond villain is over the top and borderline ridiculous, but, nonetheless, Bardem is always able to give him an edge that makes him feel like a serious threat. Whether he’s challenging Bond’s heterosexuality or doing his best Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet impression when he’s left alone with M, Bardem’s Silva feels like the sort of psychopath who’s capable of going from prancing eccentric to stabby murderer at the drop of a hat. Also, he can casually toss hand grenades better than maybe anyone I’ve ever seen, and he’s a great choice for a Bond villain.
Just because Bond has been pushed a bit to the side in order to give expanded roles to the mentor and the villain doesn’t mean Daniel Craig has faded into the background though. He’s given plenty of action stuff to sink his teeth into, and he still makes for a great action hero. He’s got a worldliness and a competence in his eyes that makes you believe he can get the job done, and a grizzled look in his face that makes you think he’s tough enough to persevere. But he’s also smooth and British, so he can play Bond as Bond, not just as a generic action hero who happens to be called Bond. Craig is just as at home betting big in a swanky casino as he is brandishing a hunting rifle out on a Scottish moor, and that’s an essential quality to have if you’re going to anchor this franchise.
Going forward, will Craig continue to play this role? The studio certainly wants him to, but his recent comments have seemed to indicate that he’s looking to get out. If that’s the case, at least Skyfall seems to be the perfect way to bridge the Bond franchise from the stripped down current experiment to something that looks a bit more like the classic films, which would be a nice place for a new actor to take over. But, if he stays, it could also be seen as the film where Craig finally eased into this stylized world and began his own legendary run with the character. Only time will tell which way things end up going, but what’s clear now is that Skyfall is among the most essential of the 23 James Bond movies to date.
