Bond in times of recession- no fun.

Rating: 5/10 (24 February 2013)

In the intro scene we see Bond following some guy. He's got some girl sidekick helping him. Both have comms to MI6 and M keeps telling them to get the guy or else they lose the list. That leads to some ludicrous motorcycle chase scene on Turkish rooftops followed by a chase and fight to top of a moving train. The girl positions herself to shoot the bad guy but Bond keeps getting himself in the crosshairs too. M orders the shot, Bond is hit and falls a couple hundred yards down a cliff and into the water.
In Act II, M attends a very public funeral for the fallen secret agent 007, when MI6 HQ blows up. Retired/vacationing Bond hears the news and returns to England to offer his services. He's in bad shape and doesn't pass the requirement tests to go back to work. Nevertheless, M who's about to forcefully retire assigns him to investigate and get back the list of all NATO secret agents embedded with terrorists.
Act III takes us to China where Bond follows the bad guy from the intro who from one highrise shoots someone in another highrise. In the fight with Bond he ends up falling down the building and Bond finds a casino chip that leads him to Macau where he cashes it in for a lot of money. There he meets a gorgeous girl (Marlohe) enslaved by the big bad guy, Silva. She offers to take him to meet Silva, but first Bond has to survive some thugs. Bond ends up meeting Silva on some deserted Chinese island. He's a former 00 agent played wickedly by Bardem, who as a sign of our times also fondles Bond who takes it with a smile. Choppers arrive and take both back to London.
There he's jailed in some glass cage. A new Q studies Silva's computer only to have his entire system infected and hijacked. Silva escapes and goes after M but his mission to kill her fails. Bond and M set a trap for him offering M as bait.
That takes us to the final act in the Bond family ranch in Scotland and a somewhat unexpected ending.
Bond movies always have been a good mirror of the times. But it's not easy figuring out what this one, and Quantum of Solace say about our times. Both movies present us a Bond in times of recession and cost-cutting. Politicians during hearings to punish M question the whole purpose of MI6 and secret agents. There are no gadgets at all in this movie. There is no glamor. While we do get one casino scene, there's no gambling involved, just fighting as the Bond movies continue their descent into Bourne territory, except that Bourne movies excel at what they are. The locations are rather unspectacular. We have seen Turkish rooftops a few times too many recently and fighting on top of moving trains, well, that's been going in since westerns. The intro scene looks like something out of some silly Michael Bay movie with cars flying around. And I don't mean that as a compliment. The intro credits are lame. They manage to show just 1 or 2 girls. In general, the girls in the this movie aren't really Bond girls the way we know them. Poor Marlohe gets a a very thankless role. And they did something with her teeth to ruin her otherwise stunning smile, the lousy make up doesn't help either.
For some reason this movie is more about M than anything else. Frankly though, who cares about her? It's also more introspective and subjective. It's less about the mission than about the audience learning about Bond's past and Bond learning about himself, or some such thing. It just isn't handled well in this movie. The revelations about M's ruthlessness should have been handled as such, as surprises. Perhaps then we could care more. Personally I'm not all that interested in Bond's background. Again, if it were handled better in a more cursory way it would be more meaningful instead of tying to make it of supreme importance when there is really not a whole to it.
The significance of the title says it all. One hears "Skyfall" and thinks of some sophisticated villain trying to take down planets. Instead it's the name of the Bond family ranch... That's more or less how this entire movie works- very underwhelming. It's a back to basics movie, very limited in scope and ambition with a flawed direction and lots of plot holes. It's a Bond for a new generation, a generation that has never seen the greatness of previous Bond movies. In the past, Bond movies were in a league of their own. This new Bond sets standards fairly low and now has to compete with Bourne and that kind of movies. And now it even has to compete with excellent TV series like Strike Back that have more of a Bond spirit than Skyfall. Skyfall is stunningly unspectacular and not a whole lot of fun.