- Location: Century Boulder
- When you get to the 23rd film of a series famous for sticking to its (admittedly proven) basic formula, it is no longer sufficient merely to summarize the plot. After all, there are relatively few Bond films that aren't about a British super-spy foiling a maniacal genius intent on terrorizing the world from his remote island fortress and/or volcano base and/or undersea lair. As such, let me just start out by mentioning what does seem new in Skyfall. For one, it contains a few really impressive displays of urban cinematography filmed on location in neon-lit Shanghai and Japan's truly ruinous Hashima Island. Second is that this story shifts focus slightly away from Bond (Daniel Craig) to the spymaster M (Judi Dench) and the collateral damage that her MI6 policies have caused over the last fifty years. A final distinction is that Bond himself is at one point presumed dead. Actually, I recall that last situation cropping up two or three other times in the series, but it's still pretty rare.
- The manner by which Bond ends up nearly dead is depicted in the film's exciting opening sequence when Bond and an agent initially known as Eve (Naomie Harris) pursue an enemy spy (Ola Rapace) in possession of the secret identities of undercover agents throughout the world. After an impressive rooftop motorbike chase and the now-obligatory drive through a crowded foreign (in this case, Turkish) bazaar, Bond and the badguy find themselves grappling on the top of a speeding train. Eve's risky sniper shot hits the wrong agent, however, and Bond goes toppling off a bridge and down a waterfall. Considering that we haven't even heard the film's theme song, a completely adequate tune by Adele, or seen the subtly clever opening credits at this point, it's a sure bet that Bond isn't completely out of the picture just yet.
- But while 007 is off recovering in the arms of an unnamed bikini-clad Pacific islander, trouble is brewing in MI6. A former agent-turned-criminal mastermind named Silva (Javier Bardem) is publicly leaking the spy identities as revenge against M for giving him up to enemy agents back when she ran the Hong Kong bureau. Silva's character is a strange mix of Julian Assange, Heath Ledger's Joker, and Javier Bardem's usual conversationalist heavy from films like Collateral and No Country for Old Men. In addition to residing on a wonderfully desolate abandoned island, he also possesses a memorable deformity that the film wisely hides until after we've already gotten to know the madman. In the meantime, Bond's return to the fold means that he has to pass a series of fitness tests, all under the watchful eye of an austere civilian supervisor named Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), before returning to active duty. One begins to wonder if M and Bond would both be better off settling for retirement.
- Truth be told, Silva is not the most memorable Bond villain by any stretch, nor is this remotely close to being the best Bond film. It is, however, a film that lends considerable support to its repeated claim that "sometimes the old ways are best" by successfully emulating several Connery-era Bond motifs that had been getting short shrift in the most recent spate of films. In one particularly dramatic instance, the classic Bond theme and Aston Martin are unveiled nearly simultaneously in a scene that surely put a smile on the face of every Bond fan in the audience. That the film counterbalances these simple acts of homage with occasional moments of genre-transcending greatness, the most notable of which involves an assassination conducted from a towering steel-and-glass skyscraper as the mysterious Sévérine (Bérénice Lim Marlohe) watches on, allows it to become more than just a paint-by-numbers exercise in copying the old movies. Just as the film benefits from mixing actors both old (Albert Finney) and new (Ben Whishaw), so too does it profit from merging familiar and novel ideas alike. And no exploding pens, for now.
