The Sky falls

What makes Bond, James Bond? Is it the guns? Women? Perhaps Style? Or may be "Martini. Shaken not stirred!"? The truth is that it includes all that brings James Bond to life. You have it all in Skyfall including something off the menu - Family. As much as I hate to say it, it totally negates what Bond means to us. We are taken for a ride into the early life of The ruthless deadly charming Spy and the story goes more personal instead of the usual "Oh-God-Save-The-World-Bond".

With the reboots that are being done in every movie franchise we have loved including Batman, Superman, Star Trek, and spiderman though I keep asking why for the latter web-crawler, the producers seem to have conceived the idea that bringing emotions and personality to the legendary characters can turn the reboots to a Gold mine. It worked for Batman perfectly, thanks to Christopher Nolan and to a good level in Star Trek by JJ Abrams. But one must keep in mind about Superman Returns and The Amazing Spiderman. It was just not enough. Reboots need more than emotions to work. Now Skyfall too falls into this category of needing more. It appears the producers sacrificed everything that Bond was for history that is totally uncalled for.

This is very much apparent when they chose Sam Mendes to direct the film. To put bluntly, Director Bala has been asked to remake Kamal's Kurudhipunal. An excellent director but put in the wrong place. Sam Mendes, well known for his American Beauty and emotional mafia movie "Road to Perdition" did what he knows best. Made the actors feel. But you must not ask James Bond to do that. Especially making him cry with X lying dead in his hands. He definitely needs to watch the previous Bond movies.

Talking about the movie without prejudice on the 22 Bond films before this, you can call the movie as done well. Not a great one. But not bad indeed. You have the fast action sequences, proof of license to kill, a dangerous villain, explosions and ladies too. But like what a friend said in facebook, you tend to doubt if it is Jason Bourne or James Bond that you see. (Was it a coincidence that both the names have initials JB?)

A devoted fan of all bond films, even for ill-fated Moon Raker (Cant forget the line "Oh! he had to fly!") to the explosive Quantum of Solace (Friend of yours? I dont have any friends), this was not impressive. Lets face it. Casino Royale was a reboot. A perfect one. A newly promoted 007 learning to become the ruthless Spy. Then they added destructiveness and cold-heart in Quantum of Solace. We loved it and so we expected more in Skyfall. But then you feel cheated! We are finally told that James Bond is getting rebooted again. And this time back to its origins. Right to the movie that started it all. Dr.No from 1962. For Gun's sake, we did not ask for this.

By the way, whats the reason behind the smirk on the villain's face when he reads the gravestone of Bond's parents. Something to be implied there? If that is true, they better remove that scene from the movie, as it makes one wonder if Sam Mendes met with Bharathi Raja for the movie.

Skyfall - falls out of the sky. 6/10

Trivia: I just thought if Eva Mendes is related to Sam Mendes. Turns out, they are related as close as Lal Bahadhur Shastri and Ravindra Shastri. ;) Just a coincidence it seems.