Skyfall is the type of movie that works on so many levels that it is a movie that will be remembered for ages to come. Probably the best Bond movie of the past 20 years, Skyfall is filled with great action set pieces, marvelous acting, impeccable cinematography, a sublime soundtrack and one of the more memorable Bond villains in ages. Filled with clever nods to the series, Skyfall is a marvelous movie to behold, and ranks among the best with Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldeneye and Casino Royale.
What I also thought was interesting, and here come the spoilers, was the choices they made thematically. Where a bond movie usually ends with James Bond thwarting the villains plans, getting the girl as the icing on the cake, and everything working out just fine, here bond fails to actually stop the villain. He wants Judy Dench to die. She does. In a breathtaking opening sequence, Bond has to stop a terrorist from stealing an important harddisk containing vital information. He doesn't, gets shot and almost dies.
Throughout the movie, the villain seems to be one step ahead of James Bond almost every time. And after the opening sequence, where he gets shot, he is vulnerable. Out of shape. Less accurate than he used to be and more vulnerable. The James Bond that was invulnerable, could defeat every opponent and would shoot faster than his own shadow is gone. The new James Bond suffers from addiction, and most of all, has become old. People don/t look at Bond anymore as the ultimate superhero, the perfect weapon against insane super-villains who plot to destroy the world, but as a dinosaur, a fossil from a bygone era. And what is so intriguing is that it is never clear whether the audience is supposed to agree with that.
One thing that underlines this entire idea that espionage may have run its course, is the fact that the main villain has set its targets not on humanity, not to rob innocent civilians of lives, no, he wages a personal vendetta against MI6, and M (Judi Dench) in particular. And to make that fight even more ambiguous, M is being a stone cold bitch throughout the entire movie. She orders a female agent to shoot a terrorist even though she might hit Bond (and does). She commands Bond to leave a dying agent and growls at him to stay on target. Later it is revealed that she sold out the villain (played brilliantly by Javier Bardem) in return for six other agents. She in fact did betray him, as he stated. During the course of the movie the question is constantly raised: is it in fact necessary to have MI6, when all terrorists motivation for existence, seemingly, is to find vengeance for the way people felt betrayed by agencies like it? Is the status quo of the world a result of blow-back, the backlash that follows by what seemed like sound policies during the cold war and the 90's?
And even if these agencies have validity, can they properly fend for themselves? During the finale of the movie, which is a grandiose shootout on the estate of Bond's parents, Before the villain even comes in, M is shot in the leg, something that eventually kills her because there is no way of escape (the villains shot the car up). While the villain of course wanted to kill her in a more grandiose fashion, and Bond eventually does get to kill him, looking at the score card, Bond did not win. He could not save M, the sole thing of importance to Bardem. He, and MI6, could not retrieve the hard-drive that would be the catalyst for all the horrible things that would happen int he first and second act. And in the middle of the movie, Bond has a chance to save a bond girl and fails.
There is something courageous about this movie, because while it stays true to almost all of Bond conventions, it breaks some that make this movie so darn refreshing. Bond is no longer the perfect spy that never misses and is never shot by the villain. MI6 is not the flawless agency that saves the world again and again. In fact, they seem archaic, and fending for legitimacy. It is a nice gesture to a world increasingly tired of espionage, of excessive cars and wealth, of a world in recession in which governments spill spend billions on shady operations in places where we might not even belong (although that's debatable of course). The world has changed, and so has James Bond. And Skyfall seems to be pleasantly aware of that.
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