Skyfall Review

John "Houzer" Smith

By Steven McLain

"There are no more shadows."  This was the repeated message in the new James Bond movie.  Once more reprising his role as James Bond, Daniel Craig is a much older, wearier and jaded super-spy.  The theme of the movie, in fact, is whether or not the Bond Initiative (as I'll take to calling MI6's double-oh program), should be continued.  **Warning, MINOR spoilers ahead**

Shadows, here, refer to the secret world of espionage in which Bond lives.  Repeatedly, politicians, administrators, even the bad guy, assert that the internet and our dependency on information systems have made the world a more transparent place.  The shadow world of Bond and MI6--and ostensibly the Cold War Manichean politics that spawned it--is no longer a tangible reality.  Intelligence is about something else.

This is just the tip of the iceberg though, as the ongoing debate harkens to something deeper: whether or not HumInt (or human intelligence) is even an avenue we ought to be taking, as the world careens toward information dominance.

The movie continually reiterates the message that with just a few lines of code the world can be hacked.  In a way, they're right; as networks, and especially systems of networks, become more integrated, a failure in one might snowball into the complete collapse of another.

Recently, US warplanners have demonstrated the vulnerability of networks during war exercises.  Wolf Blitzer, in a CNN special entitled "We Were Warned," convenes former US officials to respond to a simulated cyber-attack designed to "highlight the vulnerability of interdependent systems."  You can read the full analysis at Nature, but the message is clear: Failures snowball.  Cyber attacks represent the future of warfare, and as such, a world power ought to actively consider the way in which intelligence is not only gathered, but policed and protected.  Skyfall is thus about protecting secrets, and the necessity of continuing human intelligence gathering operatives throughout the world.

Indeed, when the War on Terror first ramped up, intelligence agencies increasingly became alarmed by the lack of eyes on the ground, and especially means of infiltrating terrorist cells--the CIA and others had already shifted toward more "eyes in the sky" style surveillance, and while powerful, lacked the initiative and intuition of agents on the ground.  Thus the shift toward a style of intelligence gathering that now integrates informants, agents, drones and satellites, as well as powerful data-sifters that continually monitor the flow of information.

Skyfall, however, maintains the notion that all this information is simply an extension of human networks; that is, human beings use and manipulate information to our own ends and that technology is simply a tool we use.  Manipulating those tools, however, influences our decisions, so maintaining the integrity of our information is vitally important.  Indeed, the object of Bond's search throughout the movie is not leaked State secrets, nor plans to a new missile defense system, or even the itinerary of the Prime Minister; rather, it is a list of agents in the field.  Of every agent in the field.  Not only that, it's a list that allies of the English government were unaware of, thus opening MI6 not only to threat by foreign governments and terrorist cells, but intense scrutiny by allied powers.

The action only really begins once James Bond is killed, shot by his own partner from atop a train.  Plunging hundreds of feet into a river, he floats downriver and is presumed dead by M (once more played by Dame Judi Dench).  Of course, we know that James Bond cannot die, especially before the opening credits (continuing the kaleidoscopic style of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, and notably absent of nude women cunningly concealed to keep a PG-13 rating), but his whereabouts remain unknown until he returns to MI6 once it has been bombed. 

Returning, Bond is subjected to a slew of qualifying tests: All of which he fails.  Bond, the omnipotent, unfailing Bond, is gone and we're left with a man older, quieter and more aware of his own mortality.  Director Sam Mendes has done a superb job crafting a fallible hero who reflects the failings of the system he represents.  The success of the movie, however, lies not in its cunningly crafted analysis of intelligence systems in a world dominated by the internet, but rather the deeply personal conflicts between Bond, M, and their pasts.  Bond is forced to confront the death of his parents; M must contend with her own choices forced upon her by the exigencies of the shadow-world that she contests still exists. 

A movie with heart, wit and a lot of brains to match its brawn, I would heartily recommend this movie to all my friends.

Seen it?  Want to see it?  Just want to let me know your thoughts on Intelligence in a post-terrorist world?  Let me hear them in the comments.