Entertaining Entry to an Ever-Expanding Bond Canon

Rating: 7/10 (18 June 2013)

Released in Bond's fiftieth year, SKYFALL contains all those elements you'd expect from a Bond film - car chases, really bad baddies, witty ripostes, the obligatory sex scene and exotic locations. To be honest, the locations are a little spurious in this film - Istanbul, Shanghai, Macau; the Istanbul scenes, in particular, seem orientalist in conception (after two decades of living in the Republic of Turkey), I've yet to find scenes of daily life with the continual strains of the muezzin in the background accompanied by arabesk music). However the film is redeemed by a close focus on characterization: we learn a lot about Bond's relationship to M (Judi Dench), and how the bad guy (Javier Bardem) finds that he has no choice other than to kill her. There's also some interesting material on the nature of family: M is considered a 'mother-figure' within the British Secret Service, suggesting that work and leisure are inextricable. Daniel Craig is a rugged Bond, making no secret of his advancing years: the film has an interesting side-line, as it speculates on whether spying these days is a young person's game. All in all, a very satisfying piece of entertainment.