Skyfall

I’ve been watching James Bond movies for as long as I can remember.  The first Bond movie I remember seeing was From Russia With Love.  The most enduring image I have of that movie was seeing Rosa Klebb slugging Red Grant [Robert Shaw] in the stomach with brass knuckles – and he didn’t even flinch.  But I digress…Almost all of the Bond movies have a common theme – some organization [SPECTRE] or country [the Soviet Union] is trying to take over the world.  Or some guy wants to enrich himself with all the world’s gold [Goldfinger].  Of course, James Bond is the guy who prevents it all from happening.  Skyfall is a different kettle of fish.  It is a good old-fashioned tale of revenge.  But unlike License to Kill where James Bond is the one seeking revenge, it is the villain who is seeking revenge.  Javier Bardem plays that villain.  He is an ex-MI6 agent named Raoul Silva [his real name was Tiago Rodriguez] who wants kill not James Bond, but the head of MI6, M [Judi Dench].

The story starts in Istanbul.  Bond is chasing a guy named Partrice, who has stolen the hard drive from an MI6 laptop that has a list of all the NATO agents who have penetrated terrorist organizations.   He’s in the field with an agent named Eve [Naomie Harris].   After riding a motorcycle through the bazaars of Istanbul, Bond finally catches up with Patrice on a train outbound from Istanbul.  Eve also gives chase, all the while M was micromanages the whole operation safely from her desk in London.  As the train approaches a tunnel, Eve has the time to shoot Patrice, but the problem is the shot is not a clean one because Patrice and Bond are wrestling on top of the train.  M tells the agent to take the shot.  She takes the shot and hits Bond, who falls off the train, over the bridge the train was crossing, and into a river below – presumed dead.  I thought about You Only Live Twice, where Bond was “killed” - what’s old is new again.

So while everybody thinks Bond is dead, M is called to the office of Gareth Mallory [Ralph Fiennes], a political type who is the chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee.  During the meeting he informs M that she will “retire” in two months time over the affair of the missing hard drive.  She has none of it and returns to MI6. Before she can return to her office, her Chief of Staff Tanner notices on his laptop that her own laptop was being hacked.  There is a traffic jam on a bridge that keeps her from MI6.  When she gets out of the car to protest the traffic jam she witnesses a huge explosion at MI6, right where her office was.    Seven MI6 personnel are killed in the blast.  Bond takes advantage of being “dead.”  He lives on the beach with a woman who doesn’t talk.  He plays drinking games at the local beachside bar.  He just hangs out, living a somewhat normal existence until he sees that MI6 headquarters was bombed.  When he sees the explosion at MI6 on CNN, he decides to resurrect himself.

When M is dropped off at her apartment following the services for the dead MI6 agents, she is met by a stranger who is shrouded in darkness.  The “stranger” is Bond.  Is she happy to see him?  Of course not – M is all business all the time.  She informs Bond he is to report back to MI6 to take a battery of tests to get re-qualified as a MI6 agent.  Instead of going back to the MI6 building, Tanner takes Bond to an underground location [because they’re on a ‘war footing’].  It turns out the underground location used to be Churchill’s bunkers during World War II.  Bond takes the tests, flunks all of them [unknown to him] and is cleared for return to duty by M.  She gives him the assignment to find Patrice in Shanghai, find out to whom he gave the hard drive, and then “terminate” him as revenge for the bombing of MI6.

Bond tracks Patrice down in Shanghai.  After Patrice completes his next job, Bond fights with him and kills Patrice before he could find out who has the hard drive.  When Bond went through Patrice’s things, he found a chip from a casino in Macau.  So Bond goes to Macau, cashes the chip, and is given a briefcase full of millions of Euros.  There he meets Sévérine, whom Bond saw when Patrice did his last job in Shanghai.  She tells Bond that her three body guards will kill him after she leaves him at the bar.  She also tells him that if he survives the bodyguards, she could be found on a boat that would leave Macau in one hour.  On cue, the bodyguards attack, and predictably they all die.  And of course, Bond meets up with Sévérine.  After spending the night on the boat, they discover they’re sailing to an abandoned island off the Chinese coast.

After landing on the island, Bond and Sévérine are separated.  Bond finally meets the guy with the hard drive – Raoul Silva.  He regales Bond with tales of how he was a great agent [better than Bond], and how human espionage was such an antiquated line of work.  Silva is now a cyber terrorist – he’s very good at hacking anything.  He tries to mind screw Bond about how he had once been M’s favorite in the Hong Kong office, but that she also lied to him and betrayed him.  Shortly thereafter, Silva kills Sévérine, but Bond overpowers all of Silva’s men, captures Silva and has him brought back to London.  After Silva and M come face to face, M reveals that Silva did indeed work for her in Honk Kong, but that he ‘went beyond his brief” when he got into computer hacking.  She reveals she gave him up to the Chinese in exchange for some MI6 agents held by the Chinese.  She said it was something that had to be done to insure a smooth transition of Hong Kong from British to Chinese control.  Silva revealed he resisted Chinese torture to keep MI6’s secrets, but after he could take no more torture he tried to kill himself by swallowing a cyanide capsule, but the poison didn’t kill him – it only disfigured him.  Hence, his motive for seeking revenge against M.  In his mind, she betrayed him.

The new Q s quite a whiz at computer hacking himself, and is able to crack the ingenious encryption on Silva’s laptop.  But when he cracked the code, it created a security breach within MI6’s own network and allowed Silva to escape.  The whole episode of Silva’s capture and return to London was a ruse to get closer to M to kill her.  While M is testifying before a public inquiry into her handling of the missing hard drive, Silva breaks into the hearing room and begins shooting everybody in sight.  He almost got M, but Mallory made her duck out of the way, taking a bullet in the shoulder in the process.  Little did he know that he gained Bond’s respect by taking the bullet for M.  He had thought of Mallory as just another political hack to be endured.  Immediately Bond hatches a plan to get M out of danger.  He lays a trap for Silva.  He instructs Q to leave a trail that only Silva can detect and follow – Mallory gives his blessing.

All company cars [including the one that takes M everywhere she goes] have a tracker, so Bond takes M to an out-of-the-way garage.  Bond explains to M he’s ditching the company car because of the tracking device installed.  What’s in the garage?  It’s an old Aston Martin coupe, just like from the old days.  I laughed out loud – what’s old is new again.  When asked about the plan, Bond responds the two of them are going to go back in time to gain the advantage over Silva.  The two head north to Scotland and end up at the family estate in Scotland, the name of which is Skyfall.  The two are met at Skyfall by Kincade [Albert Finney], who had been the gamekeeper at the estate since Bond was a boy.  They don’t have much in weaponry to repel the attack they know is coming, so they improvise some booby traps laid all over the house for the unwanted guests.

Sure enough, Silva and his boys arrive at Skyfall by helicopter, which is blazing the Animals playing the old John Lee Hooker song Boom Boom [which reminds one of the Wagner/helicopter scene from Apocalypse Now].  Bond, M, and Kincade fight off the first wave of attackers.  Then M and Kincade escape the man house through a priest hole and a tunnel to get to the family cemetery and a small chapel.  M is wounded in the fighting.  Bond managed to rig his own IEDs by rigging up a couple of huge propane tanks to a couple of sticks of dynamite.  Once the dynamite blows, shrapnel from the house hits the helicopter, damaging the helicopter so badly it crashed into the house, destroying both the helicopter and the house [Bond said he always hated the place…].

Silva tracks M and Kincade to the chapel.  He begs M to kill both himself and M with the same gun.  After having fought on of Silva’s henchmen, Bond arrives at the chapel and kills Silva by throwing a knife into his back.  He sees M is wounded, and she collapses.  She looks into Bond’s eyes and mutters something about “getting something right.”  Then, she dies in Bond’s arms – he cries.

Back in London, Eve tracks down Bond on the roof of MI6.  She hands him a package.  It was bequeathed to him by M.  Inside the box is a ceramic British bulldog, which earlier in the movie Bond had scoffed at.  Eve suggests that this was a message from M to Bond to get a desk job.  He says the opposite is true.  Eve confesses that field work isn’t for her and they both go inside.  He says they haven’t been properly introduced, so she reveals her last name – Moneypenny.  Again, I had to laugh out loud. What’s old is new again.  She takes her position behind a desk as the new M’s secretary.  Who is the new M?  Gareth Mallory.  But of course…

I figure the reason the makers of the Bond films killed off Judi Dench is because of Dame Judi’s recent health problems.  Apparently she can barely see anymore.  She has macular degeneration and has to have someone read scripts to her.  She is and always has been a wonderful actress.  Javier Bardem made an excellent villain.  This is the same guy who was Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Man, another ruthless, villainous character.  Ralph Fiennes, though he didn’t get much on-screen time, effortlessly made his character transition from a political hack into one who didn’t hesitate to face the fire when the time came.  As for Daniel Craig, it’s his best Bond yet.  This movie called for Bond to be a ruthless, thuggish killing machine – much like the James Bond character that Ian Fleming envisioned when he first created the character.  Sean Connery will always be James Bond, but Daniel Craig has cemented that role for now.