A brilliant, relevant 21st century Bond

Rating: 9/10 (10 December 2012)

Hollywood, amid an apparent wave of creative bankruptcy, is replete in this early 21st century with "franchise reboots," from Batman, to Star Trek, and James Bond. To temper traditionalist views of how these franchises "should" play out against the expectation of contemporary audiences is a virtually unsolveable puzzle, and to be sure more than a few have tried their hand at the venerable 007 franchise with varying degrees of success.
"Skyfall," featuring Daniel Craig in his third installment as Bond, offers a fantastically edgy and flawed James Bond, almost nothing like the superficial, perpetually save, always-groomed Roger Moore Bond of the 80's, or the just-blow-up-everything-in-sight version offered in the Pierce Brosnan incarnations. Craig, under the hand of director Sam Mendes, has finally his a fabulous stride of its own that is more reimagination than pure reboot, in a film that pays almost surgically deliberate homage to its predecessor yet carving out a uniquely contemporary Bond that is like none before him.
"Skyfall" producers seemed to have crafted this Bond with a deliberate purpose - to wash away from Bond the presumed Americanized predispositions about what Bond must be, and turned him back into a thoroughly British character, and the result is a fabulously entertaining two-hour 007 spy adventure that somehow reverently knits the iconic past with a grittier, edgier future.
This entry into the Bond lore starts with as eye-popping an opening montage as has been in any prior film, with motorcycle chases atop rows of apartments leading to a rail chase and of, ahem, earth-moving proportions. Yet the prologue is not merely throwaway - it is the foundation on which the rest of "Skyfall" expands.
Reinforcing the notion that Bond is more reimagination than reboot is the plain recognition of Bond's age and history within MI6. He struggles to seem physically and personally relevant as a story about contemporary enemies unfolds around him. This Bond is cognizant of his age and the new, non-cold-war political realities around him, and in that way is reinvented in a contemporary context without putting the 007 "timeline" at point-zero.
Is "Skyfall" perfect? No, but it comes tantalizingly close. Some plot devices are a bit tired, but the fatigue can be excused in light of a broader story in which Bond experiences authentic loss, recognizes to a lesser extent his own mortality, and reflects in a way no prior Bond film has posited the elements of his youth that have made him this transcendent British spy character. To create intriguing depth not before seen in a franchise character like James Bond is no small task, but it "Skyfall" does it with great aplomb.
Sure, "Skyfall" offers its own variety of explosive action and intrigue, but it also manages to accomplish what so many recent Bond incarnations have failed to do - to maintain the notion that the story at hand is a spy thriller of the Bond genetic source material. Where Timothy Dalton's Bond's seemed very much the "duck out of water," and Pierce Brosnan's Bond teetered on the pointless, Craig's version has a character substance and enduring quality possessed of neither of his predecessors. And its precisely that quality that should keep the Bond franchise alive for some time to come.
Top marks, 007.