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| Source - Den of Geek |
This Is the seventh time Judi Dench has played the enigmatic spy-chief M. But it is only in this storming new Bond movie that her M has really been all that she could be.
Under the stylish direction of Sam Mendes, Dench’s M is quite simply the Bond girl to end all Bond girls. Watching this, I thought: of course. How could I have missed it?
Introduction
Movie’s name - Skyfall (2012)
Directed by - Sam Mendes
Based on - James Bond By Ian Fleming
Genre - Action, Spy, Adventure, Thriller, Crime Fiction
Starring - Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Bérénice Marlohe, Albert Finney, Judi Dench
Language - English
Synopsis - Spoiler Alert!
The real tension in the movie isn’t with Moneypenny, but with the boss herself. Now M is an imperious, subtly oedipal intelligence-matriarch with the double-O boys under her thumb.
She’s treating them mean. She’s keeping them keen. And she is rewarded with passionate loyalty, varying with smouldering resentment. It’s a combination with its own unspoken eroticism, and it has also created the conditions for one of the most memorable Bond villains in recent times.
M demands more and more from her agents, with less and less concern for their safety. At one stage, 007 actually appears in M’s apartment, late at night, after a difficult stretch in the field.
Following a curt exchange, weary and somewhat hurt, Bond says he will find a hotel. “Well, you’re not staying here,” is M’s superbly timed and exquisitely hurtful reply.
About the Movie
This is Craig’s most accessible and well, fun, Bond movie to date; the most popcorn Bond, if you will. It’s also his funniest Bond, with deadpan humour in huge dollops, at the most unexpected places.
Director Mendes pulls out all stops to give us one of the most visually intoxicating Bond films too; the cinematography is a class apart, and certain sequences including the dazzling opening credits and a fight sequence filmed almost only in shadows give the movie a tone that’s fiercely original and still, fiercely Bond.
The acting, from all quarters, is a delight: all talented young and old characters played this game long enough to demonstrate that they aren’t merely there to be cogs in the wheel, but that they truly belong.
And to cite an analogy that’ll perhaps be used freely in the days to come, Javier Bardem is the Joker to Bond’s Dark Knight, even though Skyfall is the franchise’s ‘James Bond Rises’.
Bardem, who makes one of the best-written entries in Bond history, is deliciously wicked, and constructs a frighteningly real villain with an uncomfortable, sinister presence that looms large over every scene he’s a part of.
Personal Verdict
As with all Bond movies, you will need a sense of humour to go with the flow, and the flow does not involve a plot in the boringly normal sense of the word: more the impressionistic effect of scenes and moments and performances – and an entertaining one comes from Ben Whishaw as the gadget meister.
In recent years, Bond fans have had to tolerate some appalling product placements: fortunately, Bond’s one appearance with a certain type of lager here is with his hand firmly over the logo.
The biggest commercial branding is, I suspect, for a country, China: there are massive set pieces in Shanghai and as with the recent sci-fi thrillers a shrewd financial consideration may have been involved.
The movie’s biggest problem is the disjointed script that takes an exciting new turn every fifteen minutes, but by the end, ends up confused about where it was heading to in the first place.
Take the premise itself: MI6 is under attack and the identities of several secret service agents are now in the wrong hands. But somewhere mid-way, these agents are all but forgotten as the plot shifts gears to a cat-and-mouse game for your typical action movie staple of vengeance.
There are also more clichés in the movie. Here are some of the formulae that Skyfall revels in:
When the bad guy is caught early in the movie, you know he wanted to be caught.
When the bad guy pulls a gun on the good guy he is not going to pull the trigger.
When the bad guy pulls a gun on the good guy he is going to give a speech.
When the specific quality of a particular weapon is spoken of and dismissed, you know that’s the quality that will save the day in the end.
Truth is, all would have been forgiven had the grand finale been as devastating as was promised. Instead, we get an ode to without giving it away, a famous children’s film that seems in scale and impetus, a significant departure from the tone of the movie, as well as the franchise itself. Good or bad, it just doesn’t feel like Bond.
The Bottom Line
My complaint with Skyfall is that somewhere in between the entertainment, the CGI, the stunts and the twists, there was a great movie to be found. But it fell through the cracks into the abyss and only a James Bond can locate it now.
This is a Bond that’s both same and different to the earlier editions, and that’s possibly the reason the movie ends up being, at once, both the very best of Bond and the very worst of Bond.
What a rush! From the opening in Istanbul to the final siege shootout in the Scottish Highlands, this film is a supremely enjoyable and even sentimental spectacle, giving us an attractively human (though never humane) Bond. Despite the title, he is a hero who just keeps on defying gravity.
My ratings for the movie - 3.5 on 5
Written By - Resmita Barai
Edited By - Umme-Aiman
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