Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench
“Skyfall” is touching in its honesty, brutality and dark realism towards a figure historically portrayed in much too plain dimensions. Reprising his role as James Bond is Daniel Craig; rugged, ferocious, and better than ever, ready to reveal what lies beneath those stingy blue eyes. Akin to its predecessor, “Casino Royale” (let’s not mention a forgettable “Quantum of Solace”), “Skyfall” is Freudian in its state of mind. It isn’t telling the weakness in an enemies’ mind. It’s healing the wounds in yours.
This beauty of a film states an essential truth in life, under every man’s façade lies his past, as symbolized by Skyfall, a mysterious emotional catalyst to Bond. Beneath wit, humor and impossibly memorable catch-phrases, we find scars of the past, as real and believable as those on the body. And this doesn’t solely apply to Craig’s Bond. Javier Bardem plays the MI6 agent turned cyber-terrorist, ‘Silva’, in a bewitching portrayal of what Bond could have become, a performance which surely will go down as one of the finest of the year (get this man another Oscar!). Judi Dench is no slacker either, portraying ‘M’ with a fury and a passion, as her cynical, emotionless ways finally take their toll on a frigid but kind heart. Academy Award winning director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins further the excellence of this film. From the magnificence of an eerie Scottish countryside, to the artistry of an on-water casino in Macau, each shot is poetic. “Skyfall” is as visually enticing as it is emotionally.
Chilling in its use of modern-day England, one that doesn’t see its enemies as much as feel its invisible wrath, Mendes hits a home run in this regard. Pay attention as Dench masterfully delivers the closing lines from Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, lamenting the “heroic hearts” of her countrymen, who no longer are “that strength, which in old days moved heaven and earth”. Times have changed. The hurt is real.
Accompanied by Adele’s epic title song (I’ve got it as one of my Top 5 Bond songs of all time) and thrilling action sequences, notably a fight on top of a moving train in Istanbul, “Skyfall”, sexy and exciting, remains genuine. Characters in it are driven by a compelling voice from the past: Bond’s childhood, Silva’s betrayal, and M’s remorse. Don’t expect Bond to make an easy escape in this one.
