I Watch Films: Skyfall

 

Skyfall

James Bond (Daniel Craig), British secret agent, fails to save another agent in Istanbul, chases someone who has some secret information; yet another agent shoots him by accident at the explicit orders of M (Judi Dench), his boss, and he falls into a river. He promptly vanishes.

After the credits we learn what the information was; a list of every NATO agent. Someone threatens M with releasing it via computer. After being told off by parliament for losing the list she’s on her way back when MI6 headquarters is blown up. Seeing this on the TV News, Bond comes back from the dead to offer to help. He’s put through tests in MI6’s new (old) underground (war) headquarters, showing that he’s not entirely fit, including an amusing interview with a psychologist. When he pulls some bullet fragments from his shoulder they are able to use them to identify the assassin who got the list.

The political fallout of the list (which should not have existed) being lost and the mysterious enemy releasing names on it has M being pressured to resign*. She refuses to go out on a low point, sending Bond to China after the assassin. He finds him, watches as he shoots someone, kills him**, finds a casino chip. He goes to the casino and hands it in, receiving the pay for the assassination. He convinces the woman in charge to lead him to her boss.

There he meets Silva, the villain of the film. Silva, like Bond, was recruited and mentored by M. In 1997, when the British handover of Hong Kong to China occurred, M, learning that Silva was doing off the books missions for his own purposes, traded him to the Chinese, getting six good agents out of it***. Silva made himself useful to the Chinese, and now does cyberterrorism for them, but also for himself, apparently having learned nothing from when he did that with M. He reveals to Bond that he failed the tests (and thus obviously has access to MI6’s new systems, something Bond fails to note) and so has been lied to by M.

Silva’s attempt at making himself a dark mirror of Bond is pretty good****. The similarity of Bond’s disobedience to M and Silva’s is especially notable. Anyway, Bond brings Silva in, but it turns out this is a plot and a trap leading to the final act of the film.

Where the film falls down is in trying to say too much through the rather flimsy structure of a James Bond film. Or not say too much, say too many things. What if your past came back to haunt you, but not the past we saw on film, the bits we never knew about. What if to replace your betrayal by a woman you decided to dedicate yourself to your job and your country, but they didn’t love you back, using you as an expendable pawn. What if you went rogue, then came back and everyone was like, oh you’re back. What if you referenced another Bond film with the car, but that makes no sense in context? What if computers were magic? How about we bring in a new Q, a new Moneypenny, a new M? [SPOILERS there, sorry about that]. What if your boss was your mother and you were bound to her unto death?

Anyway what if all that. What of it.

Watch This: Cool action thriller that attempts to make some points about how being a secret agent is to flirt always with betrayal
Don’t Watch This: Bond gets women killed, looks at his past and doesn’t pay attention, goes rogue and comes back all adding up to little

* She’ll be given Knight Grand Cross Of The Most Distinguished Order Of St Michael And St George if she goes quietly, a fairly serious honour even for a senior civil servant. She treats this offer with contempt.

** M’s complaint about Bond in the last film is that he keeps killing people, seems he’s still at it. Here at least there’s a better reason; Bond is expendable for a high risk mission like this, the possibility of him massacring his way through the enemy is acceptable.

*** Cold-hearted evil queen of numbers M makes a return from her initial appearance in Goldeneye.

**** Who else do we have? Donald Grant in From Russia With Love. Francisco Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun. Then Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye. The collapse towards the end of the Brosnan years has Gustav Graves of Die Another Day claim to be basing himself on Bond; though this doesn’t land it’s in the text so I’ll count him. On balance I’m not going to count Renard from The World Is Not Enough, though an argument can be made. There are a couple of candidates from SPECTRE and No Time To Die, but I think I’ll count them out.