Done playing dead, James Bond returns after ostensibly being taken out by a fellow MI6 agent's ill-aimed bullet. But the badly considered shooting, and the overall weight of years, take their toll on 007. This welcome but, for some fans, hard-to-swallow development mirrors the reservations about the relevance in political circles about his shadowy
agency, which is constantly engaged
in invisible wars with unknown evils.
But with a maniac blowing the cover of every undercover NATO operative, politics is the least of the brusque secret-service chief M's concerns and the resurrected Mr Bond must save the day.
The biggest villain in the film is the ignominy of the decline into irrelevance. This is, after all, Bond's 23rd romp on the silver screen. Notwithstanding his slipping marksmanship, Bond, as played by Craig, is still the anti-suave killing machine of the previous two instalments. And the well-placed chinks in his armour, his yearning to gain a semblance of humanity, are still something to behold.
M (Dench), faulted by her peers for her decisions, must defend her emotionally detached choices and decisions that leave behind collateral damage, to which Bond is no stranger. Shedding the character's rough exterior, Dench brings a quiet humanity to a woman justifying her flaws. Harris, in contrast, is jarring as the initially unnamed agent who is responsible for 'gunning down' Bond.
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.
The 50th anniversary of the big-screen Bond was the right time to pull off something big. Skyfall is a hugely enjoyable action spectacular, but more grounded and cogent than the previous and disappointing outing, Quantum of Solace. It finds the right position on the spectrum between extravagance and realism: what I think of as the imaginary line running from Bond's invisible car in Die Another Day and Peter Guillam's Citroën DS in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
'Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don't really go in for that any more," says MI6 quartermaster Q to James Bond, as he presents him with some basic field kit – a gun and a radio transmitter. Skyfall is the third in the relaunched series of back-to-basics Bond, stripping away the flashier absurdities of old.
I didn't much care for the new approach in 2006's reboot episode, Casino Royale, which struck me as joyless and brutish. But Skyfall, which sees the series entrusted to the prestigious hands of Sam Mendes, puts fire back into the old formula. It takes the 007 legacy seriously, and gives us all the quintessential ingredients, without the coy self-mockery that dogged the series at its weakest. Here's an intelligent, narratively propulsive Bond, the freshest, most entertaining episode in ages.
Bond is back and he's more dangerous than ever but so is M who is the most ruthless character in Skyfall. As played by Dame Judi Dench, the security services chief is like a lioness in winter as she prowls her office ordering an agent to 'take the bloody shot', a move that puts Daniel Craig's craggy James Bond in grave danger.
A sinister force from M's past, played with delicious relish by Javier Bardem, has stolen the identities of M's agents.
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