Project Bond: Skyfall

This is it. Number 25. The last one. Skyfall.

Moneypenny’s back. She’s also black, has been given a first name (Eve), and is in the field, which is nice. Bond has a go at her for knocking off a wing mirror during some hot pursuit, and she’s not happy about that. (He also grabs the wheel off her at one point as well, which is not advisable, but then neither is a lot of the stuff Bond gets up to on his adventures.) In the middle of a fight between Bond and a baddie atop a train, Moneypenny has to decide whether or not to shoot, risking hitting Bond. M orders her to shoot; she does, Bond topples out of sight.

Back in London, M has to report to her boss about why things aren’t going so well at MI6. He tells her she’s going to “retire” in a couple of months, and she tells him she “isn’t.” On the way back to the office, the office gets blown up in some kind of terrorist attack. Things are not looking good for M and her leadership.

Then, in a shocking twist, it turns out Bond isn’t dead after all! He turns up at M’s house after seeing the attack on the news, unshaven and unforgiving. M puts him through some tests and fudges the numbers to put him back on active service as ASAP as possible. Her new boss, Voldemort, is a bit of a knob about it, but then he lets it slide with nothing more than a couple of snide comments. Bond is sent to Shanghai to chase after Patrice, the fella he was fighting on the train. Bond watches him carry out a “hit,” or “murder,” then confronts him about for whom he is working, but Patrice falls to his death without imparting any information.

Bond does, however, encounter an intriguing woman named Sévérine, whom he follows to a casino. She tells him that she works for the same chap as Patrice, and that he will be killed by her bodyguards rather than leave intact. Squeaky bum time! Bond busts his way to freedom using a briefcase full of cash, although he does fall over a balustrade onto a bed of candles. One of the bodyguards tries to shoot Bond with Bond’s special gun that only Bond can fire, and a big alligator type thing runs away with him. Another one almost shoots Bond, before Moneypenny intervenes and they bust their way to freedom.

Bond then breaks into Sévérine’s shower, and she seems dead chuffed to see him, but then she betrays him and Bond finds himself tied to a chair in the secret island of the main antagonist, Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). It’s been a while since we’ve had an island base. Silva is an unsettling chap, a former MI6 agent with a grudge against M for leaving him in captivity once upon a time. It was he who bombed the MI6 office, as you might have guessed. After a brief chat, Bond overpowers Silva and takes him back to London with relative ease. Too much ease, if you ask me.

Back at the ranch, Q (who is also back, and about 12) is trying to break into Silva’s laptop, but presses the wrong button and accidentally allows him to hack into the MI6 security system, opening his cell and allowing him to escape, which was his plan all along. He dresses up as a polis and ambushes M, but Bond figures out his dastardly scheme in the nick of time and escapes with M. He drives her to Skyfall, his country estate in an unspecified part of Scotland, where he hasn’t returned to since shortly after his parents’ deaths when he was a boy. Q plants a false trail which will lead Silva to them, but only after they have enough preparation time for a showdown.

There have been plenty of bombs during the series, but, unless I’m much mistaken, M drops the first F-bomb during this scene. (She also constructs a nifty nail bomb using a light fitting.) Albert Finney puts in a good turn as Kincade the gamekeeper, who helps Bond and M with their fight, but it was at one stage suggested that Sean Connery might play the part, which would have been perfect for several reasons. As much as I enjoyed the climax of the film, I can’t help seeing it as a bit of a missed opportunity. The house is destroyed and Bond kills Silva, but M dies from her injuries. Following her funeral, it is revealed that Voldemort is the new M, and Moneypenny has had enough of field duty and will be his secretary.

For me, this was one of the most enjoyable films of the series. Craig continues to be a terrific Bond, and Bardem is an excellent villain, unsettling and unreadable in a way very reminiscent of the late Sir Christopher Lee in The Man With The Golden Gun, and his motive of good old-fashioned revenge is one that has been strangely underrepresented in the franchise. It was good to see M as a proper character, not just the bloke in the office at the start of the film who told Bond what to do. I imagine we’ll see more of the same from Ralph Fiennes, if he’s not too busy thinking he’s better than every film he’s in, and mispronouncing his name.

Once again, the gun barrel sequence was moved to the end, which I found strange. Director Sam Mendes explains this as being because it looks very similar to the first scene (Bond walking along a corridor and pointing a gun), but it could have been integrated into the narrative, just as in Casino Royale. A tiny matter, but it just feels like change for change’s sake. Aside from that, though, the series has made some very positive changes in the last couple of decades, which is great to see.

Stay tuned for a round-up of this exciting project very soon!