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| Daniel Craig is James Bond |
There have been a lot of people who are probably not satisfied with Daniel Craig as James Bond, probably due to the much different Bond in comparison to the previous others...but I must said Craig is one of the most realistic Bond, showing both the super spy character as well as the human part in it....it gives soul to James Bond.
Ian Fleming’s secret agent is something of a chameleon, either blending in with or cashing in on the movie craze du jour. Think of Moonraker, rushed into production after Star Wars took popular cinema into orbit, or Live and Let Die, exploiting blaxploitation, or the twitchy, unsmiling Quantum of Solace, Bond’s latter-day Bournefication.
In Skyfall, we join Bond in Istanbul, chasing a stolen computer disk that contains the secret identities of embedded NATO agents. After a hair-raising chase across marketplaces, rooftops and a thundering train, the disk is lost, and for a moment so is 007. The beginning is already the climax...or should I said the story was started with such an amazing scene that keeps you wanting to know and be part of the entire movie.
But after a gothic title sequence he rematerialises in London, older, unshaven and off his game. Nevertheless, M (Judi Dench) puts him back on the case, which takes him to some of the world’s most exotic corners: Shanghai, Macau, Glencoe...
Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan’s script constantly reminds us Bond’s physical prowess is on the wane, but his verbal sparring, both with M and new foe Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a former agent turned vengeful computer hacker, is nimbler than ever. Silva is almost as inscrutable as The Dark Knight’s Joker himself: Bardem’s lip-lickingly camp turn makes him the oddest Bond villain since the Roger Moore era, and his nicotine hair flops queasily over his forehead in a way that calls to mind Julian Assange.
By acknowledging the rise of cyberterrorism, Skyfall is a Bond film for the Anonymous generation.
Mendes, whose American Beauty and Revolutionary Road were light on explosions, lets the quieter moments breathe, and a conversation between Bond and Silva that’s simply buttered with innuendo drew cheers at an early preview screening.
But Mendes is rather good at being loud, too, and his nine times Oscar-nominated cinematographer Roger Deakins makes the wildly ambitious action sequences the most beautiful in Bond’s 50-year career.
(The release of Skyfall marks the series’ half-centenary.) The sensational Istanbul prologue is soon bettered by the Shanghai segment, where Bond pursues an assassin through a soaring glass skyscraper lit up like a neon Aurora Borealis.
It’s pearls like these, not to mention the deliriously arch fight scene involving two komodo dragons, that give Mendes’s film enough momentum to power through its scrappy third act, when Silva’s diabolical plans start to feel a tad scattershot, even for a Bond villain.
“We don’t go in for exploding pens any more,” quips a fashionably tousled Q (Ben Whishaw). Nor do audiences, and I suspect Skyfall will be a stratospheric hit.
There are a few other things that one will definitely notice...the fact that Bond starts to drink Heineken....the movie still focus on the beauty of the Bond girls and the essential vodka martini. Of course, the main point is that Skyfall is "more human, capable of being moved and of crying: in a word, more real".
If you have not watch it, you've missed something amazing...Skyfall is a must watch!!
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