Skyfall (2012)

The James Bond marathon is almost over!  Today, we review the official Bond film #23: Skyfall (2012).

SYNOPSIS:
James Bond (Daniel Craig) and fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris) pursue a man who stole a list of MI6's undercover agents.  But Bond is shot and presumed dead while the man escapes with the list.  A few months later, agents' real names and their undercover names start popping up on the Internet, and MI6 is bombed.  The target of the attack appears to be M (Judi Dench), by someone from her past.  Her authority is brought into question by Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), the new Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee.  Bond, who has been recovering from his "death" on a beach somewhere, returns to MI6 to find whomever stole the list and save the lives of more agents.  But he's a dying breed; the Minister of Defence wants to put an end to MI6.  The age of spies and hiding in the shadows appears to be over, and with her agency compromised, M turns to the one person she knows she can trust: James Bond.

REVIEW:
There are some minor spoilers in this review, clearly marked so you can skip over them if you like.  With the rebooted films telling a continuing story, it's hard to give a review without dropping some spoilers, as the next film develops off of the previous story.

This film returns to the great storytelling style of Casino Royale.  We get an engaging struggle to start out the film, until Bond is shot and presumed dead.  Months later, the stolen hard drive with the list of undercover agents is finally decrypted and they start popping up on the Internet, 5 names a week.  Feeling partially responsible, Bond returns to MI6 to finish what he started.

Bond, having been shot, drifts unconscious down a river

Bond uses bullet shrapnel in his shoulder to help identify the man who stole the hard drive, then traces his location to find where the list has gone.  His trail eventually leads him to Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a rogue agent who uses modern-day technology to make his own secret missions.

Raoul Silva, tempting Bond with a new life away from MI6

There's a running theme throughout this film, that M and Bond are old-fashioned and outdated.  Mallory tells Bond that the spy business is "a young man's game." M is berated by the Minister of Defence for believing that we still live in a "golden age of espionage, where human intelligence was the only resource available."  The world is changing and spies in the field is an antiquated concept now.  So both "old dogs" have to fight, on both sides of the fence, to preserve their way of life.

I like that we get a little more background into Bond's past.  Looking for a safe place to lay low, Bond and M travel to the house Bond grew up in, a lodge in the highlands of Scotland named Skyfall.  We learn that his parents, Andrew and Monique Delacroix Bond died when Bond was a child.  MI6 recruited him and he never returned to Skyfall Lodge.  The next film will explore Bond's past a little bit more, but we'll discuss that in the next review.

M and Bond arrive at Skyfall Lodge, Bond's ancestral home

Bill Tanner (Rory Kinnear), MI6's Chief of Staff, returns to the series.  He made a very brief appearance in the previous film, Quantum of Solace (2008), but he played a bigger role in Skyfall (2012) as M's aide.  He was a regular character in Ian Fleming's novels, but the films have rarely ever used him.  Rory Kinnear is the longest-running actor as Tanner, having played him three times now (once more in the next film).  It looks like the Bond film releasing this year will also have him playing Tanner, so he's got a longer-lasting role in the new series than Felix Leiter, Bond's CIA friend.

Bill Tanner, keeping an eye on M

Q (Ben Whishaw) makes his debut in this film!  Q is now a young tech-savvy kid, who issues Bond a new Walther PPK with handprint recognition technology, so only he can fire it.  He also gives Bond a tiny radio transmitter that sends a distress signal when activated.  Q is also shown to be a computer whiz.  When confronted with a near-impossible encryption to hack, he claims there's only 6 people in the world who can create safeguards like that.  When Bond asks if he can do it, he proudly states that he's the one who invented them.

The new, young Q, hacking an un-hackable computer

Random trivia: Ben Whishaw stated that, despite playing the tech-savvy Q, he actually is very anti-technology in his personal life, not owning a computer or anything.

SPOILERS AHEAD: Skip the next paragraph if you don't want to read it.

The end of this film is both tragic, but also uplifting.  Bond stops Silva from killing M, but M is already mortally wounded from a stray bullet.  She dies in Bond's arms while looking up at him, claiming, "I did get one thing right."  Back at MI6, Mallory takes over as the new M, having his own office styled very much like the classic M from old James Bond films.  Eve, who was doing office work for Mallory, is hired on as his personal assistant.  She was the one who accidentally shot Bond in the opening of the film, so she's spent most of the film pulled from field work, doing administrative duty for Mallory instead.  She wanted to go back to the field, but admits at the end that Bond was right - not everyone is cut out for field work.  Bond says that they haven't been formally introduced yet, and she gives her full name - Eve Moneypenny.  So we have our new Moneypenny!  And a bit of backstory as to why she and Bond have a flirtatious relationship that never goes anywhere.

END OF SPOILERS.

When Bond first met Q, it was at an art gallery, where the two were staring at a painting of a beautiful old warship being towed in for scrap.  It was a symbol for Bond being relieved of duty for being old-fashioned.  The British government is in talks about dissolving MI6, and only Bond and M are really fighting the potential change.  At the end of the film, Bond is standing in M's office, and you can clearly see a large painting on the wall between them, of warships going back out to service; a symbol of Bond returning to duty for good.

An old warship being towed for scrap VS warships returning to duty

The self-titled theme song was performed by Adele and it is beautiful!  I read about her discussing the song and how she felt nervous that she wouldn't be able to make a Bond song befitting the series.  She was told that she was hired to write her style of music, so she should just make it her own.  Inspired, she wrote a song that personally moved her, and it turned out amazing.  Interesting trivia: She was pregnant when she wrote the song, and the pregnancy hormones made her singing voice deeper at the time.  She said she's unable to sing Skyfall now, because it's too low for her normal voice.  You can hear the song here:

RECOMMENDATION:
This is a brilliant return to form, introducing us to the wonderful world of James Bond that Casino Royale (2006) set up, while also expanding on that world and tying it in to the classic James Bond world a bit.  This was definitely an emotional film, and a good continuation for the series. I highly recommend watching it, if you haven't already!