James Bond is an old man now. M is an even older woman. The good old days of being a spy are gone. Super Villains just aren’t what they used to be.
Skyfall wasn’t too bad, it just wasn’t too great either. The film opens with a car chase and then has about a five minute long opening credits. I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw opening credits on a movie. It was one of countless little flashbacks to the good old days of Bond films.
James Bond may be old, but he is standard issue Bond-James Bond. He drinks a martini, shaken not stirred. He has sex with several women-and jokes when one of them is killed in front of him. And most impressive of all, he drives the same tricked out, machine gun and ejector seat equipped, Aston Martin that Sean Connery drove all those years ago.
Skyfall felt like a really long movie. At about the halfway mark, James has captured the Bad Guy and everything seems ready to wrap up in a bow. But no. This is just a trick, the Bad Guy gets away and there are more chases, more villains to kill, and more things to blow up. I would have been pretty happy if the film had ended with the Bad Guy being caught the first time.
I’m not a huge fan of backstories. I don’t need to know that James Bond had an unhappy childhood after his parents died, though it was nice to see Albert Finney as an old caretaker. I didn’t much care for the explanation as to what Skyfall is. It was a nice touch that Miss Moneypenny gets to hook up with Bond-and that she is a bit more than M’s secretary pining away for the unobtainable 007.
I like the darker, moodier Bond, but I would like them to do something more with the aging secret agent. Maybe he will need to use his mind a bit more, now that his body is starting to fail him.
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Sure made China look good didn’t it?
I must admit that I did have a sudden flight of fantasy about Shanghai when it flashed across the screen. But China also held one of the more annoying scenes in the film-why didn’t our “hero” stop the killer before he murdered two security guards and his target?