‘Skyfall‘ Upgrades Bond To Triple-A

Who needs James Bond? The question is posed in ‘Skyfall‘ in the context of a debate about the role of old-fashioned human intelligence in a high-tech world of brilliant youngsters, and an apostle of technology offers a snide answer: ‘Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled.‘ In the context of a revitalized franchise, the answer is that we need 007, even after half a century of his ups and downs in various incarnations, to remind us how deeply pleasurable an action thriller can be. The latest addition to the Bond canon goes beyond thrilling into chilling and enthralling, plus a kind of stirring that has nothing to do with martinis.

谁需要詹姆斯?邦德(James Bond)？这个问题出现在电影《007：大破天幕杀机》(Skyfall)里的一段争论情节：过去的特工在才华横溢的年轻人主宰的高科技时代能扮演何种角色。一名技术派信徒用暗讽的口吻回答：“时不时地还是要抠一下扳机的。”在007系列影片重焕生机的背景之下，这个问题的答案是：即使007以各种化身经历了半个世纪的风风雨雨之后，我们还是需要他来提醒我们动作片能带来多大的愉悦。最新加入007系列的这部影片不仅惊险刺激，而且令人不寒而栗、扣人心弦，另外还有一点撩拨心绪，这种躁动与马丁尼酒毫无关系。

The movie opens, hair-trigger style, with a man pointing a gun. The man is Daniel Craig‘s incarnation of Bond, flinty-eyed with a closed-off soul, and the sequence gets under way on the streets and rooftops of Istanbul; continues on a train, where, in the midst of definitive chaos, James pauses to shoot his shirt cuffs out of his jacket sleeves; ends with a certified shocker and earns instant admission to the pantheon of classic chases. (The surreal credits that follow are no slouch either, with Adele singing the title song.) None of that constitutes breaking news, since extravagant action has long been a Bond staple. The distinction of ‘Skyfall‘ lies in the elegance of everything that sets off what its sensationally entertaining villain, Silva, calls ‘all this jumping and fighting,‘ all this ‘running around.‘

电影开篇，一个举枪瞄准、微扣扳机的人出现在镜头里，此人就是丹尼尔?克雷格(Daniel Craig)主演的邦德，目光坚毅，心扉紧锁，随后的一连串情节发生在伊斯坦布尔的街头屋顶；接下来在一列火车上的一片混乱之中，邦德停下来拉了拉西装袖筒下的衬衣袖口；最后，是铁定发生的令人意想不到的事情并且立刻进入了故事正片的经典追逐。（随后那超现实主义风格的摄制组名单也很出彩，伴有阿黛尔(Adele)唱的主题歌。）所有这一切都无法构成爆炸性新闻，因为华丽的动作早就是邦德片的主要特征。《007：大破天幕杀机》的不同之处在于优雅无处不在，这种优雅，用电影中那个让人生畏的恶棍席尔瓦(Silva)的话说，引发了“所有这一切的蹦跳和打斗”、所有这一切的“东奔西走”。

Silva is played by Javier Bardem, who manages─and this is the highest praise for a lowlife invention─to transcend the archvillainy of Anton Chigurh, the nailgun-wielding monster he played in ‘No Country for Old Men.‘ He does this not with physical weaponry but with an actor‘s arsenal of skill and daring. Silva‘s affect is often light, like his bleached hair. He‘s a monster who uses whimsy to express menace, a malign raconteur who savors the details of a ghastly story about survivalist rats. (The astute script was written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan.)

席尔瓦的扮演者是贾维尔?巴登(Javier Bardem)，他成功地超越了自己在《老无所依》(No Country for Old Men)里扮演的头号恶魔、挥舞着射钉枪的安东?齐格(Anton Chigurh)──这是对一个虚构的卑鄙小人的最高评价。做到这一点他靠的不是手中的武器，而是一名演员在演技和胆识上的积淀。影响席尔瓦情绪的东西往往都轻小琐碎，比如他金色的头发。他是一个使用稀奇古怪的方式恐吓别人的怪物，一个娓娓讲诉求生主义者可怕遭遇的邪恶之人。（这部电影出彩的剧本是由尼尔?珀维斯(Neal Purvis)、罗伯特?韦德(Robert Wade)和约翰?洛根(John Logan)编写的。）

Mr. Bardem is only one of several top-flight actors who flourish under the direction of Sam Mendes. Mr. Craig‘s distillation of toughness and hurt tells us all we need to know of Bond‘s inner life. Judi Dench‘s M has given six previous Bond films a grounding that verges on gravitas. This time Dame Judi turns the role into a meditation on mortality, along with a celebration of minimalist precision (as in her reading of the line ‘Take the bloody shot‘), and gets to fire off a few shots of her own. The cast includes Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes, Bérénice Marlohe, Ben Whishaw and, as icing on the exploding cake of a giant climax, the great Albert Finney playing a gamekeeper with a sense of history.

巴登只是在萨姆?门德斯(Sam Mendes)执导的这部片子中大放异彩的数名一流演员之一。克雷格对坚韧和伤痛的升华演绎告诉我们大家，我们需要了解邦德的内心生活。朱迪?丹奇(Judi Dench)饰演的M女士在之前的六部007电影中近乎严肃，这一次朱迪夫人将角色变成了一个对死亡问题深思冥想、对最没有确切把握的行为都要坚决主张的人物（就像她在片中说出“给我无情地开枪”这句话那样），而且自己还要开上几枪。这部电影的演员阵容还包括尼奥梅?哈里斯(Naomie Harris)、拉尔夫?费因斯(Ralph Fiennes)、贝纳尼丝?玛尔洛(Berenice Marlohe)、本?威士肖(Ben Whishaw)。大腕级的阿尔伯特?芬尼(Albert Finney)充当了一个巨大分层爆炸蛋糕上的糖霜，扮演的是一名有历史使命感的猎场看守人。

Cars don‘t usually get applause from movie audiences, though one of Bond‘s rides did just that at my screening. And producers don‘t usually get praise from movie critics, though it‘s warranted for Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, whose stewardship of the franchise is back on track after a near-derailment in ‘The Quantum of Solace.‘ The kinetic pageant they‘ve put together is smart about many important things: showmanship, sexual politics, visual splendor. (Roger Deakins was the cinematographer.) The only false note is the straw-man dialectic of the plot: No one in the intelligence community these days would argue against the value of human operatives. Yet the movie‘s smartest suit is emotional intelligence: ‘Skyfall‘ keeps us caring, intensely, for a hero who, by any rational measure, is a vestige of a vanished era.

影片中的汽车通常不会博得观众的赞誉，不过我在观影过程中发现邦德有一辆座驾确实很吸引眼球。电影制片人往往也得不到影评人士的称颂，不过芭芭拉?布洛柯里(Barbara Broccoli)和迈克尔?G.威尔逊(Michael G. Wilson)肯定会受到赞扬，《007：大破量子危机》(The Quantum of Solace)上映时近乎脱轨的系列影片运作现在又回到了正轨。他们聚合起来的盛大阵容在很多重要方面十分讨巧：表演技巧、性别政治、恢宏的视觉效果。（罗杰?迪金斯(Roger Deakins)是本片的摄影师。）唯一错误的一点是影片情节中的稻草人辩证逻辑：如今在情报界没有人会否定真人特工的价值。然而这部电影最聪明之处在于对情商的诉求：《007：大破天幕杀机》让我们热切关注一名英雄，而从任何理性的角度来衡量，他都是一个业已消失的时代的余影。