Skyfall

When I was in my early teenage years, I first discovered James Bond.  Not the films, you understand - the books. In Swindon, where I grew up, there was a second-hand bookshop run buy a guy called Spike.  Spike was probably in his forties and seemed a lot older and a lot seedier but he let my friend and I sneak into the adult section, so he was okay with us. I remember one year that my sister didn't know what to get me for Christmas and so, taking the pound that she gave me (this was a while ago), I went to Spike and bought most of the Bond books in tatty old paperback.

To a teenage boy, they were fantastic and I became obsessed with all things Bond.  I knew his brand of cigarettes (Moreland) and his favourite breakfast (scrambled eggs with black coffee). I looked for pictures of Hoagy Carmichael.  I knew the original James Bond was an American ornithologist and a million other things that were of no interest to anyone other than me.

I loved the books and, as so often was the case, the films always seemed like a bit of a let-down.  I liked Dr No and From Russia With Love (for a long time my favourite) and always enjoyed putting my battered VHS copy of Goldfinger on.  I liked On Her Majesty's Secret Service a lot but disliked every Roger Moore Bond film.  I was excited when Timothy Dalton got the role and really liked The Living Daylights but lost interest again, as did a lot of people, when Peirce Brosnan took over.

Which brings us to Daniel Craig.  Who is, let's be honest, brilliant.  No, he doesn't look like Hoagy; yes, he's kind of blond.  But has there been an actor since Connery who's looked more like the "blunt instrument" that Fleming described? Has there been an actor since Connery that's looked like he could do the things Bond is supposed to do? Casino Royale was brilliant, Quantum of Solace was... disappointing and after hearing all the hype, I was very much looking forward to Skyfall.

Don't get me wrong; it's not a bad film. Craig is, as ever, excellent.  Judi Dench is a great M.  Ralph Fiennes (who was a candidate for Bond at one point, I seem to remember) is good value as ever. I even liked Ben Whishaw's Q, which is not a sentence that I ever expected to type.  It's just that, as a film, the whole thing is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Let's start with Javier Bardem. Good actor, nice performace but completely wrong for the film, uncutting any sense of tension.  Are we really supposed to believe that he is some kind of evil super-genius? Are we really supposed to believe that he amasses an immense fortune and then puts in place an elaborate plot, purely for the purposes of killing M? Bardem plays him like a cross between Hannibal Lector and Graham Norton, which is fun to watch but completely destroys any menace.

And the plot doesn't make any sense, either.  To put that scheme together (which presumably involves stealing the list of agents) must've taken years. The point I threw my hands up was when Bond catches up with Silva in the underground and Silva explodes a bomb, crashing an underground train. Great sequence, impressive to look at, total and utter nonsense. How did Silva know Bond (or anyone) would catch him? How did he know Bond (or anyone) would catch him at that location, so he could place a bomb there in advance? And catch him at precisely the right time for a train to be coming? 

But leaving plot logic to one side, the whole film is baggy anyway; the bit at the end, where Bond takes M to Scotland (there are spoilers ahead, by the way) to save her feels like a tagged on ending that drags on interminably.  The whole film is about twenty minutes too long and I found myself checking my watch, wondering when it was going to end.  When it does end, the film ends badly; the whole film is about Bond trying to save M from Silva and he fails; indirectly, Silva kills her. Which is fine - I'm all for a downbeat ending; I loved The Mist, remember? They don't come much more downbeat than that! - but it's out of character with the rest of the film. There's little emotional resonance. She just dies, Bond cries a bit and then goes back to work. M is a long-running character: I supposed to care that she dies but the film doesn't give me any reason to.

And while I'm talking about the end, as nice as it was to see the DB5 again, that just did not make any sense at all. The DB5 was introduced in Goldfinger, which was released in 1964.  It's obviously the same car as it features the same gadgets (ho ho, Bond thinks about ejecting M).  Are we supposed to think that the Bond from Goldfinger is the same man as in Skyfall?  But what about the establishing scenes in Casino Royale, where we see Bond earn his Double-0 license?

To me, the Aston Martin was symbolic of the whole film. It looked okay, on the surface, but if you think too much about it, the whole thing falls apart.  I don't mind that in a film, so long as that thinking takes place after the film.  When your fridge logic moment starts taking place during the film, you know the film has problems - the narrative hasn't taken you along with it.  As I said earlier on in this (much longer than I expected) piece, I didn't dislike the film - it's just not very good.  It's like the Adele theme song - okay but not quite there; a sort of ersatz Shirley Bassey number that tries hard but doesn't quite hit the notes it strives for. Disappointing.