Bondathon: Skyfall

It’s been 10 years since the embarrassment that was Bond’s 40^th anniversary and the travesty that was Die Another Day. The Bond movies were pulling on 50 years old, and the franchise was in the best shape it’s been in for many years, and to top it all off, they had the best Bond actor ever in their hands. But, would the franchise suffer the same fate as its last anniversary?

Well, there’s no point in really saying that Quantum of Solace wasn’t up to snuff compared to the likes of Casino Royale. There were worse entries in the series, yes, but when it comes down to the cinematography, some of the secondary characters and that godawful theme song, it seemed that nobody did it worse. The producers at MGM needed a slight turnaround. So, they fired Marc Forster from the series and started another director hunt, which turned them to Academy Award-winning American Beauty director, Sam Mendes, which was the best decision they could have made. Mendes sought out to create a classic yet modern Bond that would please most crowds, and god did it work.

But what am I doing telling you about how it played out? Let’s dive into the masterpiece that is Skyfall.

So, the movie starts yet again without a gunbarrel, but I could care less, as the first shot focuses on Bond entering a room with a musical cue to investigate the possible theft of a hard drive on MI6 agent Ronson’s computer. He arrives to find the hard drive gone, and leaves the building to be greeted by Eve (Naomie Harris) in a truck. The two of them chase after the thief in the streets of Istanbul in a nice small car chase until Bond causes the man to crash. The man gets out of the car and fires shots on Bond and Eve, then the gets onto a nearby motorcycle and flees. Bond commandeers his own motorcycle and proceeds to chase after the man upon the streets and rooftops of Istanbul.

The man comes to a dead end on a bridge where Bond and Eve surround him. The man leaps on his bike and onto a train below, and Bond follows, while Eve finds a road to follow the train. The two men fight on the train roof for a while until the man attempts to go further down the cars. He jumps onto another car, while Bond gets into a digger that the train is carrying. The man shoots at Bond, wounding him, but Bond still manages to drive the digger towards him as the man uncouples the cars. Bond makes a bridge from his car to the next using the digger’s arm, which he runs up and on and gets to the car. The two fight for a while longer until they approach a tunnel, where Eve is parked nearby, ready to take a shot from a sniper rifle. She aims at the two, but the shot isn’t clear, however M pleads for her to, “take the bloody shot,” so she does. The bullet hits Bond and he falls into the waters below, meanwhile, the man gets away with the hard drive.

After the credits scene we move on to see M writing the obituaries for Bond. She’s called down to the house of parliament to speak with Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), the chairman of the intelligence community, about her last few missions as M. Mallory puts forth that things aren’t quite what they used to be, and there needs to be some definite changes around MI6, which would have to start with M’s voluntary retirement. M refuses and leaves the building. On her way back to MI6, Tanner gets a call from Q branch about a hack into the MI6 mainframe. He uses his computer to track where the signal is coming from and it pinpoints to M’s computer in her office. The car pulls up to a bridge near to the MI6 offices, and the two step out to scold the roadworks in the way. The scolding is interrupted as an explosion breaks out in the building.

Meanwhile, Bond is relaxing on some island in the Pacific with girls, scorpions, and Heineken beer, when he learns about the explosion in London. It’s obvious that time has passed since the mission with Eve, as he’s scruffy and not up to spec, but still, he goes back to London to assist MI6. He comes back to find most of his things, including his flat, have been sold, and that MI6 is now operating in an old World War II bunker underneath MI6. A few training montages and some exposition later, we find Bond is (supposedly) ready to go back out into the field. He meets with M and Mallory in M’s office as Tanner brings up the results from the man from the beginning’s bullet. The man turns out to be a guy named Patrice, a gun for hire that mostly works for the man who blew up MI6. M sends Bond out to Shanghai to find out who he’s working for as well as terminate him for the deaths he has caused. Tanner pauses and states to M that he didn’t know that Bond passed the tests, and M replies that he didn’t.

Bond goes out to an art museum to meet with the franchise’s new Q (Ben Whishaw) to receive his gadgetry for the film. I don’t know if I like the fact that the movie kinda goes through the trouble to make it clear that this is the new age and that Q isn’t the type to be an, “old man,” like he used to be, but I do enjoy Whishaw as Q and I’m glad he’s becoming a mainstay in the series. We then travel to Shanghai where Bond follows Patrice to a building. Bond goes inside as Patrice kills a guard then enters an elevator to the top floor. When on the top floor, Patrice sets up a sniper rifle aimed at the next building over, where an art auction is taking place. Bond watches close by as Patrice takes out the man whom has just sat down to investigate the painting on display. This is the moment when Bond strikes, fighting Patrice until he causes him to fall out of the window. He holds onto Patrice and asks him who he’s working for, but Patrice lets go of Bond’s hand and kills himself before letting go of any information. Bond then stands up and glances over at the other building where he catches eyes with a woman inside the room.

He travels to Macau after receiving a tip from a casino chip in Patrice’s possession. As he is getting ready in his hotel, Eve visits him and proceeds to give him a, “very close shave.” She states that she was sent there to help Bond figure his way through this thing, so she then follows him to the casino from which the chip came. Bond walks inside the casino and cashes the chip in when he spots the girl from the night before in Shanghai. Once she learns he cashed it, she joins Bond for a drink, and announces her name to be Severine (Berenice Marlohe). Bond turns on his classic charm and attempts to seduce Severine into trusting him, but she’s hesitant at first. However, when he finds a brand on her arm, showing that she was part of the Macau sex trade at a young age, he swears that he can protect her. She doesn’t trust him, but she warns Bond that her bodyguards will kill him after she leaves, but if he survives, he’s more than welcome to join her on her boat in an hour. Bond fights the body guards while nearly escaping a komodo dragon and makes his way to the boat.

Severine takes Bond to a deserted island where her boss is stationed. She claims that he single-handedly made them all leave by tricking them into thinking there was a gas leak. Bond and Severine are separated and he is taken into a room and strapped to a chair, and we finally meet our main villain of the film, a former MI6 agent known as Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Silva commences to explain to Bond that he’s old fashioned like Bond, that they’re, “the only two survivors of the old ways left.” Then he tells Bond that M isn’t trustworthy, going over a few of his scars from the beginning mission, saying that M did this to him, and she can’t be trusted. Bond swears that she had never lied to him before, but Silva proceeds to tell him his testing results, all of which were a fail. He then offers Bond a job, saying he could make all his own missions for whatever price, but his main objective is to get rid of M for what she had done to him.

Silva takes Bond out to challenge him to a little shooting game. He presents Severine, handcuffed, standing next to a damaged statue with a glass of Bond’s favorite scotch on her head. Silva states that whoever shoots the bottle off her head wins. Bond shoots and misses, but Silva doesn’t miss, shooting Severine in the face, causing the glass to fall off her head. Bond finally takes the chance to attack and take out the guards, and just as it’s him and Silva alone, friends from MI6 appear in helicopters. It turns out that Bond activated his tracking device before entering Silva’s lair. Bond takes Silva back to MI6 and we get a rather chilling scene between M and Silva. We learn that Silva was captured by assailants in Hong Kong, and throughout many ways of torture, he kept his mouth shut. When he learned that M wasn’t going to come for him, he used his cyanide capsule, but it didn’t work, as his brain thought it best that he needed to see M again and pay revenge. M scolds Silva and says that he’ll be transferred to another prison, but before she leaves, Silva shows the damage that the cyanide did: most of the right part of his face seemingly melted slightly…a quite jarring image. Outside in the hall, M tells Bond the true identity of Silva, Tiago Rodriguez, and explains that he was a fantastic agent for her in Hong Kong. However, he started to take matters into his own hands and began to interfere with the wrong crowd’s plans, so she turned him in to them in return for a few agents in captivity.

M heads off to her inquiry in London while Bond goes to Q branch to assist the decryption of Silva’s computer. This part right here begins the best part of the movie. It cuts back and forth between Bond and Q trying to figure out this web of data that Silva placed inside his computer and M being berated in the court. Q finds a few strings of code which spell out the word, “Granborough,” which Bond says to use as a password. It works, untangling the messy data into a map of the tube system in London. Just as this happens, the doors in the floor begin to open. Everyone watches in bewilderment, before Bond bolts off to check on Silva. He discovers that Silva has escaped, and it turns out that he programmed his computer to hack into the MI6 computer.

Bond drops down the hole used in Silva’s escape to find a tube track. Q guides him and eventually leads to a station. Meanwhile, Silva disguises himself as a police officer and blends himself into the crowd, making it more difficult for Bond to single him out. Bond searches through the bustling and thick crowd with no avail until it leads to the tube itself. Q manages to figure out just as the tube leaves that Silva got on, leaving Bond to run after it and catch it just before it was too late. He gets on and finally confronts Silva, leading to a small foot chase that goes to an abandoned tube. Bond frantically shoots at Silva before Silva stops him. He triggers an explosion in the ceiling of the tube, and when it doesn’t hit Bond, bond looks at Silva and says, “I do hope that wasn’t for me…” Silva laughs and replies, “No…but that is.” Just as he finishes, a train comes and plows into the ceiling hole, running down into the abandoned tube, which Bond narrowly misses. Q tips Bond off that Silva is now headed towards the hearing.

M is just finishing with her remarks at the hearing when she finally makes her last words: a poem by Tennyson. Meanwhile, Bond gets out of the tube and starts running towards the hearing after Silva. This scene is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The music swells in this small theme, while a slow-mo camera focuses on Bond running through the London traffic, while M reads the poem. It’s all so beautifully done and crafted, it makes me almost want to tear up every time I see it. It’s scenes like this that make Bond seem more of a human being than a superhero, and I love that. Anyway, Bond gets to the hearing just as Silva arrives, and a gunshot ensues between Bond, Silva, Mallory, and Eve, as various members of the enquiry and M struggle for cover. Bond shoots a few fire extinguishers in the room to block the view of everyone for M to get out. Bond runs out and gets into her car to take off as Tanner puts her in. Bond then asks for Q to set a trail of breadcrumbs behind them that only Silva could follow.

After Bond and M transfer to Bond’s old DB5 (-shivers of excitement-), they drive out to the Scottish countryside where Bond’s childhood home, Skyfall, is located. They arrive at the manor to find it deserted, deserted except for one man: Kincade (Albert Finney), the gameskeeper of Skyfall and Bond’s old caretaker. Bond explains the plan and the sudden intrusion (“Some men are coming to kill us…we’re going to kill them first.”), and Kincade agrees to help out. They gather their only few weapons together (a hunting rifle, Bond’s walther, and a few knifes) and begin to prep the house with various explosives. I must point out the various few scenes of M we have here, pointing out how cold and angry she is as she looks over the hills, awaiting Silva. She also drops the series’ first F-bomb, but that’s besides the point.

The night finally comes as Silva’s men begin to march over the hill. Bond uses the machine guns in the DB5 to ward off the first few rounds, and then the rest of the gang join in. Most men are taken out by the strategically placed explosions, and whoever’s left are killed by Bond and Kincade. As the firefight ends, Bond notices that Silva isn’t part of the soldiers they took out, but it doesn’t take long to find out where he is, as a helicopter peaks over the hill. As the copter begins to fire shots at the house, setting fire to most of it, Kincade and M use a secret tunnel to escape and set out to a nearby church. Bond attempts to take down the helicopter using a machine gun he nabbed from one of Silva’s soldiers. The attempts are futile however, so Bond takes his last resort: blowing up the whole damn house. He begins to set up two kegs of Kerosene to use as explosives, while Silva orders the pilot to shoot more things. He orders the chopper to shoot Bond’s DB5 and the car engulfs in a ball of flame.

The music swells as we get a clear shot of a very, VERY angry Bond as he watches his beloved DB5 explode. He finishes setting up the bombs and retreats to the tunnel, reciting, “I always hated this place,” before running away as the bombs explode. The explosion is great enough to cause Silva’s chopper to crash into the house, causing an even bigger explosion, which Bond barely gets away from. He begins to make his way to the chapel, but Silva catches up to him on an ice lake. He preaches to Bond that all of this wasn’t necessary if only Bond joined him when he asked. Bond refuses once again, so Silva leaves one of his henchmen to fight Bond on the ice lake. Silva then sets out to the chapel to see M one last time. He walks inside to find M on the ground, bleeding badly from a bullet wound. Silva kneels down to her and gives her a gun, asking her to kill them both, but before she’s able to do anything, Bond walks into the room and throws a knife into Silva’s back, finally killing him. But, he’s unable to celebrate, as he runs to M, who slowly dies in his arms.

Later on, we see a shot of Bond on the roof of MI6, looking over London. Eve comes up to join him and they walk back down to the offices together. Bond says that he never quite got her full name, so Eve tells him her name is Eve Moneypenney. Bond says it’ll be a pleasure working with her before Tanner tells him M is ready to see him. We find out that Mallory has taken up the role of M as Bond walks into the office. M looks at Bond and says that there’s a lot of work to take care of and tells him to get ready. Bond looks at M and replies:

“With pleasure, M. With pleasure.”

There’s no doubt in saying that Skyfall is one of this series’ greats. It’s a fitting 50^th anniversary tribute to everything that makes Bond great, and then some. Sam Mendes’s directing is a powerful thing, all multiplied by Roger Deakins’s cinematography. It’s all together in a beautiful masterpiece of color and clear shots, and it’s a damn shame that Deakins wasn’t nominated for an Oscar. Add one fantastic soundtrack by Thomas Newman and you’ve got a surefire hit.

The cast is quite amazing as well. Daniel Craig, yes, I love Daniel Craig, this is obvious. But let’s talk about Javier Bardem. He’s an absolutely terrifying villain as Silva, he’s kind of like the negative version of Bond. I didn’t know much about Bardem before this movie (besides a role in No Country for Old Men), but I’m glad I do now, and I’ll definitely be looking for him in films to come. However, I think the best role in this movie is probably Judi Dench as M. Something about how powerful she was near the end, as we see the great distress and sadness on her face, as well as the anger she has against Silva, it’s powerful stuff, really. And then there’s the Tennyson scene, which I already gushed about, so there’s that. Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, and Ben Whishaw are welcome additions to the series, and I’ll be happy to see them as the franchise progresses.

So, why am I not calling Skyfall my favorite like I do Goldeneye or Casino Royale? Well, there’s a few scenes around the beginning which kind of drag along, especially as Bond is, “dead,” and M is being criticized on the way she runs things. I also think that the character of Severine was very much wasted, there was some definite potential for her character that wasn’t really fleshed out. I know I said these words about Quantum of Solace, but I honestly think Skyfall is closer, but still has no cigar (or maybe it’s a cigarette, considering how small the gap is). But, either way, I really do adore this movie, so I’m giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars (I think that’s the only time I’ve given that rating).

So, that concludes the Bondathon for 2015. Next stop is Spectre, which I’m very excited for. It’ll be a while before I do anything like this again, but I do have to say…it was absolutely a blast. Thanks to everyone who paid attention to it, I do greatly appreciate it.

See you guys in a few days with my review of Spectre!