Skyfall review

Skyfall (12A/PG-13, 143 mins)
Director: Sam Mendes
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Bond 23, as it was once known, the first James Bond adventure for four years due to legal wrangles, finally arrives with the rather more evocative title of Skyfall, alongside what’s sure to be a collective sigh of relief from audiences that it was worth the wait.

Like its predecessor, Quantum of Solace, it begins with a rip-roaring chase, as Bond (Daniel Craig) and his colleague (Naomie Harris) pursue a suspect through Istanbul. He’s in possession of a file containing the names of MI6 moles, something that M (Judi Dench), controlling operations from London, is desperate not to lose. Unsuccessful in his mission, the pre-titles sequence ends with Bond being accidently shot and presumed dead.

Back in London, Ralph Fiennes is the government lackey who wants to fire M for the loss of the file. Meanwhile, having been off the grid for months, Bond returns when MI6 comes under attack from former agent Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), who is waging a personal vendetta against the agency, and M in particular.

From that opening sequence, one that reveals the ruthlessness of M (Judi Dench) while suggesting Bond has some humanity, it’s clear that this is a film with more on its mind than simple action. It’s the kicking off point for a drama that actually has its characters at its heart and isn’t just an excuse for exoticism and mayhem.

As we travel to China and back, it retains the glamour of a Bond film while sending up their inherent silliness, managing the extremely difficult task of being both knowing and deadly serious about its plot machinations, even while providing some huge laughs.

It’s the most introspective of Bonds, one that dares to consider the possibility that maybe everything about it is getting a little long in the tooth, from M to Bond to the spy game itself. But there’s also humour, with touches that nod to the 50 years of Bond without falling into the cartoonish self-parody that blighted Die Another Day on the occasion of Bond’s 40th.

It’s also a triumph for Craig, who in his third outing has truly made the role his own. He was allowed some room to breathe in Casino Royale but in Quantum of Solace, which looks more and more of a dud with every viewing, he was basically the Terminator, rampaging through action scenes with an unstoppable dourness. Here he’s human, real and flawed, and when he returns from his extended absence, he’s even lost much of his physical ability and lethal skills.

And far from being an indicator that the franchise is ready to be pensioned off, Skyfall actually feels like a breath of fresh air. This is a Bond movie for the ages, at once a culmination of what the Craig movies have been working towards, as well as a tribute, a reinvention and a continuation, and it works on every level imaginable. Adele’s title song is the best for many a long year, and there are a few surprises, the meaning of the film’s title simply being the start of them.

On top of that there are a couple of true masterstrokes. One aspect that’s going to get a lot of attention (and hopefully an Oscar) is the work of Roger Deakins, long-time director of photography for the Coen brothers, and more recently for the director here, Sam Mendes. Whether it’s the neon skyscrapers of Shanghai or a rainy London street, Skyfall is just gorgeous.

Then, in a dream piece of casting, there’s Bardem. In the role of a flamboyant villain once again, you might have expected something of a rerun of his Chigurh from No Country for Old Men, when what he actually serves up is so unexpected, so delicious, that you can’t takes your eyes off him from the moment he makes his sensational entrance.

Too many times recently we’ve heard characters in Bond movies talking up the bad guy, only for the reality to be a bit of a letdown. But Silva lives up to the billing, and though his scheme seems simple, he’s always a step ahead. In that respect he’s very much a successor to Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, an agent of chaos rather than a supervillain who’s a physical match for Bond.

Fights are choreographed, not edited into existence, and thankfully any pretence to be being a Bourne film, with jittery hand-to-hand combat and all that free running guff, is jettisoned. Though it may not be on the scale of some previous adventures, the action sequences still have ambition and audacity while never losing sight of the characters.

It’s a complicated juggling act for Mendes, and he and everyone involved in Skyfall has risen to the challenge.

Taken 2 review

Taken 2 (12A/PG-13, 91 mins)
Director: Olivier Megaton
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Following the surprise success of Taken a few years back, this significantly less accomplished sequel opens with the funerals of the Albanian gangsters slaughtered by Liam Neeson’s ex-CIA agent Bryan in the first film, and their relatives swearing revenge. In Istanbul with his daughter and ex-wife, Bryan and his ex are taken, and their daughter must shake off her victim role to come to their aid. The family setup is clunky but necessary, but movies like this live and die on their action. Chases are fine, but punch-ups are frantic and shaky, given no room to breathe by a director who might have watched The Bourne Supremacy a few times, but which doesn’t qualify him to shoot an intelligible fight sequence. And, neutered to a 12A certificate, much of the satisfaction, and sometimes coherence, is taken out of the kills. Lacking the purity and single-mindedness of the original, Taken 2 just doesn’t move forward with the same sense of purpose, though it is still passable fun to watch Bryan employ his lethal skills.

The Bourne Legacy review

The Bourne Legacy (12A/PG-13, 135 mins)
Director: Tony Gilroy
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Reboot fever strikes once again, extending a franchise its owners obviously think has plenty life left in it, even if its star has other ideas.

Matt Damon’s departure from the spy series could have signalled its end, but in a rare move for a reboot, not only is its star replaced, but the main character.

Signs going in are encouraging enough, with a new star in Jeremy Renner who has shown twice in the past few months that he’s perfectly at home in an ongoing action franchise. And as we saw in The Bourne Identity, when it came to super-assassins, there was never just one, so the series has been primed from the start for spinoffs and continuations, even if unintentionally.

The Bourne Legacy begins as Identity did, and as Ultimatum ended, with a body floating in the water. But this is no corpse, it’s Renner’s Aaron Cross, on a training mission in Alaska fuelled by pills and injections.

Wisely it’s not a slave to formula, and Cross is not just another amnesiac. So we’re introduced to Rachel Weisz’s scientist as a way in to a government-backed conspiracy run by Ed Norton that’s been producing pharmaceutically enhanced soldiers, of which Cross is one.

The spectre of Jason Bourne still looms large over this, with the story actually taking place concurrently with The Bourne Ultimatum, for reasons that at first look like they might be quite interesting, but which turn out to be fairly spurious.

Norton has been looking into the CIA programmes that spawned Jason Bourne, Treadstone and Black Briar, which it would seem are only a small part of parallel programmes at risk if the Bourne situation explodes, leading Norton to shut it down, but not reckoning on Cross surviving.

Director Tony Gilroy comes on board to replace Paul Greengrass, who many credited for much of what was good about Supremacy and Ultimatum. Yet Gilroy has form, as writer of the original trilogy, and as director of Michael Clayton. And looking at the results here, Clayton is the film it resembles more than most, a talky yet largely compelling affair that forgoes action for intrigue, with a lot of science thrown around without pause for breath or explanation.

Every effort is made, sometimes too much effort, to shoehorn this into the Bourne universe, and it would certainly help to have some familiarity with the previous movies to have any hope of keeping up with a labyrinthine plot.

So it’s sure not dumb, its crisp, high-level dialogue driving several lengthy dramatic scenes. And yet the first proper action is a long time coming, with plenty downtime until the next sequence making this, whisper it, occasionally a trifle dull.

The bursts of hand to hand combat are as rapid and brutal as ever, but they're thin on the ground. Renner’s Cross is composed and wry, much more talkative than Bourne ever was, and when he’s able to use his skills and training to get out of impossible situations, the film certainly comes alive.

But the main vehicle action sequence, a frenzied motorbike chase through the streets of Manila, is more chaotic than precise; more edited together than envisioned with the skill of Greengrass, and with a disappointing recourse to CGI.

So if you're expecting more of the same, you’re not going to get it, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Even if it often tries hard not to be, The Bourne Legacy is very much its own beast, a conspiracy drama that’s fine on those terms, but which suffers in comparison with its forebears.

The Adjustment Bureau (12A, 106 mins) review

The Adjustment Bureau (12A, 106 mins)
Director: George Nolfi
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The work of late sci-fi author Philip K. Dick has been very well treated by Hollywood over the years (Blade Runner, Total Recall) and just as frequently badly mishandled (Paycheck, Next). The Adjustment Bureau falls somewhere in the middle, offering some modest fantasy fun that’s most notable for its terrific star pairing of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. Damon plays a popular politician who meets and falls for Blunt’s dancer, but is then warned he must never see her again by a group of shady guys in hats. They seem able to predict the future and go to great lengths to keep them apart, with Damon determined to exercise free will and be with her. More romance than action-fest and light on any actual danger, The Adjustment Bureau is full of goofy rules that keep getting re-written, while chase scenes are slick without exactly fizzing with energy. It’s monumental hooey that only gets sillier the longer it goes, but Damon and Blunt share great chemistry and with stars on this form, it’s fairly compulsive stuff.

Killers review

Killers (12A, 100 mins)
Director: Robert Luketic

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Essentially taking the basic plot of True Lies and stripping it of all wit and invention, Killers is a dull plod through a succession of badly written setups that, for a lightweight action comedy, is nowhere near breezy enough, and offers a dearth of laughs or rousing conflict.

It kicks off with singleton Jen (Katherine Heigl) on holiday in France with her overbearing parents (Tom Selleck and Catherine O’Hara).  She meets the handsome, frequently shirtless Spencer (Ashton Kutcher) whom we know is actually an international assassin there for a job, but who doesn’t tell her that.

Not long after meeting her, and none too believably, he begins to question his career choice and decides he wants a normal life. So, back in the States, and a quick jump to three years later, they're happily married and living in suburbia with Jen still having no idea that Spencer used to be a hired killer. But just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in, with his old handler telling him if he doesn’t do another job, there’ll be a bounty on him, and seemingly every one of his neighbours could be out to kill him.

Little about Killers works. There’s not really much going for it in the early stages except some nice French scenery, followed by a black hole in the middle where absolutely nothing happens for a good half of the film’s running time. Then it turns frenzied for an all-action final stretch that becomes little more than a series of shoot outs and car chases and throws in a couple of Bourne style fight scenes only without the necessary expertise.

A subpar level of scriptwriting should take the blame for most of the problems, with Jen and Spencer going from deliriously happy to bored to bickering without once coming close to believable. Throw in characters who are barely introduced but yet later become pivotal, farcical coincidences and revelations that make no sense whatsoever and you’re left with a clumsy mess.

Kutcher shows more charm than he usually manages, but unfortunately he’s dragged back by Heigl who, reuniting with her director from The Ugly Truth last year, proves that her unappealing turn in that catastrophe was no fluke. But worst of all, the genuinely good actors in O’Hara and Selleck are wasted, her only character trait being that’s she’s a lush, his that he has a Tom Selleck moustache.