A Surprising Bond Girl at the Center of Craig's Most Accomplished Turn as 007

Rating: 8/10 (24 November 2012)

The now half-century-old James Bond franchise is still the epitome of spy-versus-spy action cool having survived the Cold War all the way through the new millennium, and Daniel Craig continues to carry the mythic mantle with steely resolve in his third entry in the series. Directed by top-level filmmaker Sam Mendes ("American Beauty"), this 2012 movie manages to be both a cheeky throwback to the character's legacy and a state-of-the-art Bourne-inspired terrorist thriller. It opens in classic style with a breathless chase through the streets of Istanbul and literally on the rooftops of the old city's Grand Bazaar with Bond and MI6 operative Eve hot on the trail of a target carrying a hard drive containing the identities of every British Secret Service agent. A shot is fired, mandated by M back in MI6's London headquarters, and knocks Bond into a river. This leads beautifully to the macabre Saul Bass-inspired title sequence underscored by Adele's sonorous vocals.
Meanwhile, MI6 is under siege and goes underground when Bond finally resurfaces rattled by his near-death experience. Given a Walther PPK and tracking device by a new post-adolescent Q, Bond travels to Shanghai to confront the elusive target again in an exciting mano-a-mano fight. He is led by a sexy enigmatic woman named Severine to Silva, an ex-MI6 agent-turned-cyber-terrorist hell bent on revenge against M for sacrificing him on an espionage mission during the Hong Kong hand-off. As Silva starts killing off the agents identified on the disc, he arrives in London with the intent of publicly executing M, so Bond escapes with her to his childhood manor in the Scottish Highlands which gives the film its name. The story up to this point is genuinely thrilling, but by the time we get to the climax at Skyfall, the movie loses steam and most essentially, creative invention. It becomes an over-the-top conflagration in more ways than one leading to an inevitably fatalistic encounter in a chapel.
What also struck me about this movie was the scarcity of Bond girls - only two, neither of whom figures in the climax - but then it dawned on me that Mendes and screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan have really set up M as the ultimate Bond girl. Judi Dench has far more screen time in this film than in her other appearances, and she allows us a glimpse behind the starchy Machiavellian mother figure she has played so adroitly. As Silva, Javier Bardem sports another bad haircut (and a dye job this time) to play a Bond villain that balances precariously between menacing and campy. His fey manner and come-on scene with Bond are amusing enough, but the disjointed nature of his role comes from the fact that his vengeance is directed far more at M, not Bond. Eurasian French actress Bérénice Marlowe is stunning as Severine but only has one critical scene that allows her to show any dimension, while Naomie Harris ("28 Days Later") lends comely grit to Eve even if mainly on the sidelines.
In an extended cameo that seems to beg for the return of Sean Connery (who would have been too distracting had he been cast), an almost unrecognizable Albert Finney plays Kincade, the resourceful gameskeeper of the Skyfall estate, in avuncular fashion. Ralph Fiennes shows up as an intelligence officer with the authority to determine the future of MI6, but it's clear his character is being set up for the next entry in the series. Joining Connery on the pantheon of 007s, Craig is really making his interpretation of Bond uniquely his own as the super-agent goes through what amounts to a mid-life crisis. Cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has provided expert lens work to previous Mendes projects like "Revolutionary Road", captures the richness of the exotic locales - Shanghai, Macao, Istanbul, a deserted island in ruins, and even the Scottish highlands - with fluid dexterity. The film runs long at 143 minutes, especially since the last half-hour does not keep up the momentum built up to that point. The more important takeaway, however, is that the film is successful in whetting one's appetite for the 24th installment in the series.