Skyfall

* photo courtesy of forbes.com

It's a painful Bond movie to watch.  More mental that visual, I would suppose.  The theatrics of a Bond film are there, albeit subtler; you hardly see the elements of the gaudier Bond films of yesteryear.  Bond is back, but this time he makes mistakes.  M, his boss, makes a lousy battlefield call.  An inexperienced field agent is asked to fulfill the role of a trained sniper and fails miserably.  A good agent turns, and the outpouring of revenge makes him the worst enemy.  Bond drowns himself in alcohol, and when he comes back into action, he is so unfit for the job--his shooting hand twitches uncontrollably.  He can't get anything right.  His quartermaster has no respect for him.  The oversight committee chairman wants M's retirement, and Bond is a certified dinosaur in the cyber age.  His inherited estate even gets sold on auction; what else could go wrong?  As we learn more about Bond's childhood, his trophy of previous glory (the Goldfinger Aston Martin DB5) even gets crushed by the opposition.  Using his skills and the basest of weapons in his dwindling arsenal, he tenaciously bounces back, only to lay M to rest.  I could go on and on, but up to the end of the film, I felt a heavy burden on my chest.  It's a mature Bond film no doubt, and to get to that point, the acting is superb--kudos to Dame Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes and Daniel Craig.  My only sigh is that by making the franchise too realistic, the fun of watching "the whole new world" of Bond is suddenly gone.  No more megalomaniacs out to rule the world with frighteningly crass cliches, no more femme fatales with almost twisted names, no more cute gadgets, no more witty repartee, no more massive invasion teams landing at the shores of the madman's castle.  The stunts, the chases, the explosions are still there.  However, everything is muted, realistic, even frightening--a statement that mankind will still need heroes, even if heroes are no longer needed by men.