SKYFALL – WHAT A FALL
TO INCREDIBLE LOWS
Waiting to see the movie with my
spouse I delayed to go to this movie for almost a week and after seeing I
wished why not I gave it a miss. The
long wait for about 3 years and a wait of a week after its release in India is
not worth and it turned out to be a huge disappointment. I don’t remember having seen such a boring
Bond movie or any Hollywood action flick.
Bond movies are synonymous with gravity
and death defying and edge of the seat; thrill a minute action scenes and
gorgeous bond girls, both of which used to serve as bench marks for others to
try to copy. For close to half a
century the Bond franchise followed the time tested and most liked pattern,
raising the bar with each bond movie and the die-hard bond patrons like me
always asked for and looked forward for more and more – and they definitely got. Skyfall and the new Bond has been
a huge disappointment with hardly any action scene worth being in a Bond movie,
no gadgets, no car chases, no menacing villain, no equally menacing side-kick
to the villain, no exotic locales and above all no bond girls.
Last week, I saw on TV, Jakie Chan’s Armor of
the God 1 and 2, both of which have urban setting and locales (not being the
pony tail martial arts teaching
teacher-student Chinese kung-fu movies) and the action scenes and chase scenes
were top class considering that they were released some two decades back. On
today’s count, one will be better served to go to any Surya’s Tamil movie or
any Tamil movie directed by Shankar, Muragadass or Allu Arjun’s Telugu movie or
any movie directed by Raja Mouli, VV Vinayak or their remakes in Hindi, and you
will find fantastically mounted action scenes. To get clarified of any doubts one can see the 2 minutes teaser of
Kamal Hassan’s most ambitious and eagerly awaited Vishwaroopam released
yesterday on his birthday. Coming to
the famous Bond girls and the chemistry between Bond and them, the less said the better
and I am sure our own Emraan Hasmi, at his current form, can beat the hell out
of the Bond.
After a disappointing debut in `Casino Royale’, Creig has picked up
considerably in Quantum of Solace
especially in the action scenes as the one at the construction site on the
crane in a high rise building. He is considered
to be a more rugged Bond who believes more in hand combat rather than falling
back on high-tech gadgets. With this perception
in mind, one would expect more bone breaking stunts from him. Quite disappointingly he gets shot in the
opening scenes itself and takes long to heal till interval (a forced one in
Delhi theaters) to come back to normalcy and almost till that time the villain
was also not introduced. For most part of the movie, he is acting as
if he is acting in a Indian family drama and emotional pot boiler. The story line is so confusing focusing
more on M and trying to show as if she is making more sacrifices in putting
Bonds into life-threatening situations than the Bonds themselves, and like an
Indian politician clinging to her seat even when he is forced to go on
voluntary retirement and quite unpredictably for a Hollywood, in a typical
Indian filmy style dies in the end trying to walk away with a sympathies. So like the old Gadget-guru who was retired
few movies back, the M character has also thankfully come to an end – we have
seen lot of her. No
strong justification is given why a one-time secret service agent has turned
villain and what he wants to achieve.
As again the lavishly mounted climax scenes of any bond movie, the
climax was set up in a small fort-like old ancestral house of the bond and what
our super-hero like bond was doing was simply take leaf out of Home-alone
(that too being a poor take-off) – what a let down?
As far as Indian audience are
concerned, like any bollywood movie of Salman Khan, the reviewers have gone
gaga about the new bond and jostled with each other in giving 4 and 4 plus
ratings and the production house also adopted the same trick of bombarding the
market with huge number of prints and many of which are dubbed versions in
Hindi, Telugu and Tamil. The only thing
to rejoice about this Bond flick is that on eve of release of this movie, Movie
Now is showing Bond-movie a day for the last 10 days and it appears they will show
most of the 23 movies and that is a huge treat. Incidentally day before I saw Roger Moore’s
A View to a Kill and thoroughly enjoyed the movie specially action scenes in
icy mountains, the polished villain and menacing black lady as his side kick.
Crieg is signed up for a total 5
movies, which means 2 more Bond movies are going to come with him playing the
Bond, one only hopes he becomes more action-oriented than
emotional-oriented. Till then we have
to fall back on Mission Impossible, Transporter, Fast and Fury or even settle
for Ombak (Tony Jha – the Thai martial arts star) franchises.
The review is a week late and
most of you might have seen this movie like me – if not avoid it or go if you
have some sleep-disorder.
S. Prabhakar
8th Nov., 2012
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