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Film: Skyfall

  • Fr Peter Malone

It looks as though this is a James Bond film that you will have to see to make up your own mind. The critics have been generally very favourable. The box-office has been very good. But, the bloggers on the net have been devastating in their critiques and condemnations.

This review will be favourable.

While admittedly there are some plot holes and some improbabilities (and should you want details, the IMDb has more than 590 entries and counting, some growling about in minute detail and numbered lists, the flaws), this celebration of James Bond's fifty years is quite entertaining. It is also a consolidation of Daniel Craig's taking on the role. He is a rather unsmiling actor and has been tough and rugged in his previous two films. Here he is still rugged but has a little more debonair charm than before and does a lot of his confronting of villains wearing suit and tie. This is true of the opening sequence, chases in Turkey and over the roofs (as in The International and Taken 2), car chases, pursuit on the top of a train (with the help of a bulldozer) and a sequence where he is shot and plunges into a river. And that's just the beginning.

Fans have complained that the film is boring. Depends on what you want. If it's non-stop bursts of action and guns, then it will be boring. However, there is much more to the plot. The list of agents has been hijacked and M and Gareth Mallory (Judi Dench and Ralph Fiennes) are being pressurised by expert computer hacking and the blowing up of MI6 buildings. It's about time for Bond to return - and he does.

In tracking down the villain, there is an assassination in Imax-like panoramas of Shanghai. There is a femme fatale (Berenice rather good in what turns out to be a small role) and, ultimately, a meeting with the arch-villain. His entry is most striking. A long shot as he walks towards a bound Bound, arriving in close-up as he explains himself. It is Javier Bardem as Silva. Barden won an Oscar for his oddly-coiffed assassin in No Country for Old Men. This time he is much quieter, somewhat camp in manner and conversation, blonde hair, a master narcissistic psychopath - whose motives are revealed and make sense in the contxt of MI6.

But, most of the final action is in England and, then, in Scotland. Silva, after being captured by Bond, is targeting both Bond and M and engineers an escape which sets him loose in London where he wreaks disaster (the Tube crash of a Wimbledon-bound District Line train) and death (especially at a parliamentary enquiry).

Bond decides that a showdown is needed and opts for the highlands (where Albert Finney turns up for an entertaining cameo).

While there are explosions and shootouts, the level of sex and violence is played down compared with previous films.

Women are to the fore in this outing. Naomie Harris has plenty of action in Turkey, action and glamour in Shanghai before she settles down as Miss Moneypenny. And, this is very much Judi Dench's film, appearing right throughout the film and essential to plot development.

The film is long and there may be too much character development and talk for the action-only addicts, but Sam Mendes is a stylish director, the performances are fine, there is wit in the dialogue and some sentiment, with even Craig-Bond shedding a tear at one stage.

And the late explanation of the title helps bring it all together nicely.

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