First of all lets get this out of the way. Yes, it’s very good and you should go see it. No, I’m not going to reveal any spoilers, it’s that good.
“Skyfall” is the 23rd James Bond film by Eon Productions, released in the 50th year since “Dr. No,” and a pretty serious reboot of the second-longest, second-highest grossing film series in history.
Bond has achieved the status of a generation-spanning cultural icon. The character was born out of the World War II service of author Ian Flemming, who once took an idea from fiction and helped create Major Martin, Royal Marines, “The Man Who Never Was.”
(A plan to divert German forces from Sicily to Sardinia by dropping a corpse into the sea near Spain with false documents.)
After Flemming was demobbed he told a friend he planned to write the greatest spy novel ever. That novel was “Casino Royale” and the rest is history.
Bond has been often imitated and parodied. My favorite imitator is James Coburn’s “Derek Flint.” My favorite parodies are MAD Magazine’s “OO7 the Musical,” set to the music of “Oklahoma,” and Sol Weinstein’s “Israel Bond,” secret agent Oy-oy-seven of the Israeli secret service M33 1/3.
But in recent years the series had become imitative and a parodic of itself. During Roger Moore’s tenure as Bond I only watched them on TV.
Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan restored some of Sean Connery’s gravitas, but even these relied heavily on fantastical gadgetry.
Then came Daniel Craig in “Casino Royale,” and I was blown away. Craig was tough, but not superman. He came out of fights battered and bruised, but his opponents didn’t come out at all.
“The Quantum of Solace” was disappointing, and some of us feared this was a final flash in the pan before the series faded into irrelevance.
Wrong. The first thing you notice in “Skyfall” is the absence of the classic dum-dah-dah-dah-dum-dah-dah-dah beat and the view down the rifled barrel of a gun as Bond shoots and the screen bleeds red.
The credit roll after the initial action sequence is classic Bond visual fantasy, with theme song by Adele. It sets you up for the Shanghai at night scenes a little later, which produce a similar surreal effect from the neon of the city seen through the windows of a glass skyscraper.
Gagetry is kept to a minimum. The new Q (Ben Whishaw) looks like a nerdy grad student, but can back his brag that he can do more damage from his computer than Bond can in the field.
The Bond girls have smaller than usual roles, the real Bond girl the action revolves around is M (Dame Judy Dench) whose past has come back to haunt her.
MI6 agent Eve (Naomie Harris) appears at the beginning to be window dressing, to set Bond up for his decline into an alcoholic fog, but in the end is revealed as a new regular.
Beautiful, mysterious Severine (Bérénice Marlohe) is utterly convincing as poised and cool on the surface, barely concealing the stark terror underneath.
Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) comes on-screen as the kind of bureaucrat Bond despises, until the chips are down and he displays guts and a depth only hinted at. New regular.
And there is a villain, and oh what a villain! Silva (Javier Bardem) is matchless among Bond villains, making his incredibly complex plans within plans actually seem plausible.
There are plenty of allusions to classic Bond, the old Aston-Martin makes a final appearance.
And did they allude to “the old fashioned ways” from Vadim’s “Barbarella” on purpose?
What surprised me was, “Skyfall” is not a super-weapon of the kind in “Moonraker” or “Goldeneye” but a lodge in Scotland where Bond grew up, and in which the climactic action takes place. A battle which Bond, M, and a figure from his childhood Kincade (Albert Finney), must fight with hunting guns and ingeniously improvised weapons.
And without beating you over the head with it, there’s kind of a point stuck in there too. M tells a parliamentary committee that today’s enemies have no borders, but live in the shadows. That classic intelligence work and black ops are not antiquated.
And there is a wonderful epitaph for the British Empire from a poem by Tennyson she recites to them, that might apply to Bond himself.
“We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
And as Bond returns to duty you hear that dum-dah-dah-dah-dum-dah-dah-dah and look down the rifled barrel and spreading red to the promise Bond will be back.