Film review: Skyfall

By ALISTAIR HARKNESS
Published on 24/10/2012 08:40

AFTER the soporific Casino Royale and the chaotic Quantum of Solace transformed James Bond into a melancholic secret agent, too preoccupied with pining for his dead girlfriend to really deliver a satisfying 007 adventure for the modern age, this latest instalment finally lets Daniel Craig have some fun.

The Sam Mendes-directed Skyfall is both a playful tribute to the entire 50-year history of Bond on film and a worthy modern-day action movie.

Thus, while Mendes eases us in with the traditional action overload of the pre-credit sequence (this time involving a fight on a train with a digger), he soon kicks things up a gear with a stunning rooftop fight in which Bond is shot in silhouette against Shanghai’s neon-lit night sky while battling an assassin.

Along the way, as Bond pinballs from Turkey to China to London and, eventually, to Scotland (where his parentage plays a crucial thematic role), we see him taking on Javier Bardem’s deliciously outré villain, Rauol Silva.

Silva is a throw-back to Bond villains of old, but also a much more progressive bad guy than Bond is used to dealing with.

In their most intimate exchange, he amusingly taps into some hitherto unexplored homoerotic traits in Bond.

What’s clever and satisfying about Skyfall is that it uses its heritage to reinforce why Bond still matters on the big screen, which, after this, he assuredly does.