Skyfall: That's not Bond!
Skyfall
Starring: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes
At: PVR
Rated: 5/10
Starring: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes
At: PVR
Rated: 5/10
This one is anything but Bond — starkly, painfully and bewilderingly so — that too in its golden jubilee year! Yes Mr Bond, you are 50, but who in his right frame of mind would like to shed his carefully built up, delightful identity so totally so as to make your creator turn in his grave? And what kind of Bond will want to give up his gizmos, his continental flings, his breath-taking action stunts and, not the least of all, his gorgeous women and cars to take to unexplained sentimentality and a loser’s resignation of all things good and happening?
Please tell me Mr Bond, what kind of Bond audience will like you to declare yourself dead and live in the anonymity of an alcoholic haze somewhere unknown and unsung merely because your boss asked your colleague to take the first shot knowing fully well that you are the ultimate escape artist? And what kind of Bond takes an asset to a remote place and then has it killed, especially when that’s the only job he seems to be doing in the entire movie?
Yes, Mr Bond, we all know this is about transition and the exigencies of age etc. But, in popular imagination, Bond without his props at 50, or 100 for that matter, is like Rajnikanth without his stunts, Amitabh Bachchan without his swagger and Ethan Hunt without his highrise danglers. So, to see you after a long gap of four years, that too as a loser on the job, was extremely disheartening.
We like you with all your props, and being unfit for a job, is not one of them, even remotely. In Skyfall, you are listless, you are unkempt, you are without a woman, without a strategy and totally without a presence. One wonders why at that golden age of 50, you would lose so much sheen and become just any actor in any moderate action movie.
Mr Bond, you are about thrills, about the good life, about unbeatability and about doing what no man, or should we say agent, has ever done before. Did the problem arise in this one because you dissociated with Ian Fleming? Or was it because no one told you not to commit harakiri? Do let us know. Till then, we await the next, reformed, one from you. Though, how we will do without Judi Dench we really don’t know. And please do remember, you are 007, not any ordinary mortal.
Please tell me Mr Bond, what kind of Bond audience will like you to declare yourself dead and live in the anonymity of an alcoholic haze somewhere unknown and unsung merely because your boss asked your colleague to take the first shot knowing fully well that you are the ultimate escape artist? And what kind of Bond takes an asset to a remote place and then has it killed, especially when that’s the only job he seems to be doing in the entire movie?
Yes, Mr Bond, we all know this is about transition and the exigencies of age etc. But, in popular imagination, Bond without his props at 50, or 100 for that matter, is like Rajnikanth without his stunts, Amitabh Bachchan without his swagger and Ethan Hunt without his highrise danglers. So, to see you after a long gap of four years, that too as a loser on the job, was extremely disheartening.
We like you with all your props, and being unfit for a job, is not one of them, even remotely. In Skyfall, you are listless, you are unkempt, you are without a woman, without a strategy and totally without a presence. One wonders why at that golden age of 50, you would lose so much sheen and become just any actor in any moderate action movie.
Mr Bond, you are about thrills, about the good life, about unbeatability and about doing what no man, or should we say agent, has ever done before. Did the problem arise in this one because you dissociated with Ian Fleming? Or was it because no one told you not to commit harakiri? Do let us know. Till then, we await the next, reformed, one from you. Though, how we will do without Judi Dench we really don’t know. And please do remember, you are 007, not any ordinary mortal.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, November 4, 2012
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