A perfectly timed high watermark for the series, 'Skyfall' ups the action, drama, and stakes for Bond to deliver its best entry yet

Rating: 10/10 (28 October 2012)

Fifty years after Bond's first screen outing, 'Skyfall' represents a remarkable high watermark for the series, a truly stunning masterpiece that counts as one of the best, if not the best, Bond films we've seen. It is also so because it is quite unlike any of the Bond films thus far, delving into his origins as well as his relationship with Moneypenny for its most character-driven addition yet. The showy action and authentically British wit are as sharp as ever, but what makes 'Skyfall' stand out is how surprisingly riveting the drama is.
Kudos to returning writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, together with Oscar-winning scribe John Logan, who have expertly tapped into today's real-world fears for a tense and thrilling story that spans three continents. Beginning in Istanbul, we are dropped into an operation that's already unfolding – the recovery of a pilfered hard disk drive that contains the names of every single NATO-allied spy embedded in terrorist organisations around the world. Bond is on the chase, paired with fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris), but predictably it goes south, leaving the disk in the wrong hands and Bond presumed dead by MI6.
Then without allowing you to catch your breath following that firecracker of an opening, the MI6 headquarters is rocked by an explosion, and M's computer is hacked into with an ominous message 'think on your sins'. Of course, 'Skyfall' isn't the first to envision a scenario where our once hallowed security institutions are compromised from within, but that nightmarish 'what-if' is depicted so realistically here you can't quite help but feel unnerved.
His country and company under attack, Bond returns from seclusion to hunt down the perpetrator, a chase which leads him to Shanghai, then Macau, then a desolate island and finally back to London. Halfway between that globe-trotting manhunt, Bond is finally acquainted with his nemesis, Silva (Javier Bardem). Right from his superb one-take opening where he saunters up to Bond with an extended speech about cannibalistic rats and the inversion of the natural order, Silva proves to be smart, menacing and eerily unpredictable.
Unlike the caricatured Bond villains, Silva isn't filled with delusions of grandeur to destroy the world – his purpose is as personal as it gets, involving a bit of nasty history with M, and not unlike that which Bond has to confront himself. 'Skyfall' is the first to allow Judi Dench to flex her acting chops - and the thespian seizes the opportunity to deliver a first-rate performance with dignity and poignancy.
It's not just M who needs to confront her demons; for the first time in the franchise's history, its suave and confident character is made to confront his as well. Continuing with his grittier transformation that began with Martin Campbell's notable 'Casino Royale' and subsequently Marc Forster's underwhelming followup 'Quantum of Solace', Bond is here even more human than he has ever been.
And yet it is precisely this change that is likely to make Bond an even more convincing hero than he ever was to today's audiences – as Christopher Nolan's 'Batman' saga has shown, it's not nearly enough that our big-screen heroes save the day, we need to know that they can bleed and hurt on the outside as much as inside. Bond's struggle to find conviction, purpose and meaning allows his audience to develop a deep emotional investment with the character.
Certainly, this is a film with big ambitions – it wants not only to pay tribute to the Bond films of the past, but also to rejuvenate the franchise for another jubilee. Thankfully, Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes manages to preserve the Bond iconography and redefine the franchise's traits. After sitting out the last two movies, Q (or Quartermaster) is back, but in the form of a younger geek played by Ben Whishaw. Mendes also introduces what is likely to be a new recurring character in Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), a bureaucrat brought in to make M accountable for MI6's mistakes who later becomes a surprising ally.
Mendes too has made this an actor's film, and nowhere in the history of the franchise will you find a better performed film. Every actor is perfectly cast, but two are especially worthy of singular mention. First is Javier Bardem, who injects pizazz and menace into his villainous role that is showy without being cartoony and edgy without being over-the-top. And then of course there is Daniel Craig, who in his third outing, truly makes the character his very own. More assured than he has ever been, Craig brings class, style, grit, temperance, determination and courage to make his Bond the most complex and captivating one we've seen yet.
Even with the dramatic additions, Mendes knows the Bond fans need cool action – and just from the heart-stopping opening sequence in Istanbul, he lets you know that he is committed to the task. While its globe- trotting nature might invite similarities to 'Bourne', Mendes applies a much more expansive scope to the action without any of that shaky camera-work, so trust us when we say that the sequences here are simply exhilarating. In fact, the movie pulses with its own energy and momentum from start to finish, and despite running at more than two hours, you'd wish it could go on for longer.
That sentiment is also how you know that producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have succeeded in transiting James Bond from an old- school action hero to a contemporary one. Not only does it mark a turning point for the character, it also is for the franchise as a whole – and 'Skyfall' couldn't have arrived at a better time to breathe new life into 007. The wit, the action, the style are all as intact as ever after 50 years, but the drama is new, fresh and spellbinding - even if this Bond is older, he is also wiser and better than ever before.