Butler's Cinema Scene

“SKYFALL” My rating:  B- (Opens wide on Nov. 9)

143 minutes | MPAA  rating: PG-13

The plot of “Skyfall,” the latest (and, according to a rising chorus of voices,  best) of the James Bond franchise, is irrelevant. The narratives of all these movies are interchangeable.

Here’s what matters:

Daniel Craig’s blue eyes, followed closely by his pecs.

Bond’s skin-tight gray suit, practically a character in its own right.

The gold Aston Martin from “Goldfinger” (the ejection seat still functional), taken out of mothballs for a last run.

Javier Bardem’s ridiculous blond Euro-mullet.

Judi Dench’s no-nonsense, mother-knows-best M.

Ben Whisaw’s gawky whiz-kid Q.

Chases.

Explosions.

Scenery.

Now I could wish that just for once we’d get a 007 entry that was actually about something, or at least had some of the emotional resonance (limited as it may have been) of the first two “Bourne” movies.

But that’s not this franchise’s style. Here what you see is all you get, but at least director Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” “Road to Perdition,” “Revolution Road”) gives us plenty to see.

“Skyfall” begins with a motorcycle/train chase through the Turkish countryside that appears to end with the death of Craig’s Bond, and concludes  with a high-body-count shootout on the Scottish moors in the now-crumbling ancestral home – Skyfall — of Bond’s dead parents.

I suppose you could view “Skyfall” in a sort of backhanded way as the James Bond origins story.

In between there’s plenty of action and Craig-gazing. We’re introduced to the British Secret Services’s new  quartermaster, Q, played by Whisaw (he was the piano-playing composer in “Cloud Atlas”) as a long-necked, youthful-looking geek who would be right at home in an “Archie and Veronica” comic strip.

The plot? Well, you would ask about that, wouldn’t you?

Okay, in a nutshell:  Unnamed bad guys have stolen a data card containing a list of all the British agents who have infiltrated terrorist groups and enemy governments around the globe. The man behind it all is Silva (Bardem), a one-time Brit spy and mad genius who has sworn revenge on his former agency, especially Dench’s M, whom he blames for his near death.

The most interesting plot element here is the relationship between Bond and M. An orphan, Bond may see in M a sort of mother figure. But whatever love he has for her is tested when, for the sake of a mission, she is willing to sacrifice 007 and his fellow agents.

When M becomes the target of Silva’s inexorable plot, it’s up to Bond to become her protector.

Bardem’s Silva is one of the better Bond villains, a flamboyantly fey (Is he gay? Is he not? Discuss among yourselves…) fellow who seems to find everything terribly amusing. He’s crazy but crazy smart…a lot like Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter. And like Lecter, Silva has a knack for running circles around the authorities.

Ben Whisaw…the new Q

Here he allows himself to be captured, is imprisoned in a high-tech glass cell, but manages to get out to wreak havoc.  Just how Silva pulls off his miraculous escape and other machinations is glossed over with the same nonchalance with which the film deals with Bond’s resurrection after a seemingly fatal  fall from a railroad trestle.

If you want logical explanations you’re at the wrong movie.

Look for a bearded Albert Finney as the aged gameskeeper at the old Bond manor and Ralph Fiennes as a high agency mucky-muck who wonders if  M hasn’t outlived her usefullness. And Naomie Harris as a fellow agent who will undoubtedly have a bigger role to play in future 007 films.

And then there’s Craig, who provides a brutally handsome center for all the action. His Bond is less a charming ladies’ man (he prefers shooting his gun to shooting his…well, you know) than the “blunt instrument” described by Dench a couple of films back. He’s fascinating to watch in action but you wonder if there’s any soul beneath the sleek exterior.

But do we want a Bond with soul? 

Probably not.

| Robert W. Butler