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I regret to inform the public that a senior member of Ministry of Defence, Commander James Bond, CMG RNVR, has been killed by producers Michael G Wilson and his step sister Barbara Broccoli. Broccoli wishes to add “I shall not waste my time trying to come up with an original Bond movie, but instead copy every movie from the Bourne series, Mission Impossible, the Transporter series, Blade Runner, Batman, and even Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games.”

When the Bond series was revived for the movie “Casino Royale” the produces claimed its goal was to get back the original Ian Fleming novels. Sam Mendes claimed he read the Bond novels in preparation for the 23rd James Bond movie, at the time, unnamed. However there is little evidence of this scholarship.

Instead, Skyfall is little more than graphic novel with exotic sets and little substance. In fact, Hollywood has given up trying to be original; it appeared that every movie presented in the pre-film trailer was a graphic-novel/comic book.

The pretitle sequence shows Bond and a field named Eve in Turkey trying to retrieve a stolen hard drive containing the names of operatives and agents. In the beginning of pre-title sequence, there is a wounded agent, we are never told why two 00 agents are sent, who Bond tries to treat on the spot but is told to ignore him to go after the hard drive by his cold boss. Then a hackneyed car chase follows through the streets of Turkey that ends up on train where Bond is shot accidently by Eve using a variant M4 from about 400m away.

Bond is presumed dead, we even get a piece of the token Fleming reference as we see M write his obituary. Fanboys on Bond sites and Wikipedia to this day cannot explain to me how Bond could work for MI6 and the Ministry of Defence at the same time. Presumed to be dead, Bond hides out in the Mediterranean spending his days having sex with some unknown island woman and nights playing drinking games that involves scorpions (not the 80s rock band), and apparently mornings at bar spending Euros before they go out of style watching Wolf Blitzer. If I were presumed dead on a Mediterranean Island with a very attractive woman, I do not think I would waste my time watching TV, let alone CNN international.

Bond returns to the batcave, er, London after our villain blows up MI6 headquarters. After he is put through an exhausted physical and mental psychological evaluation, he is returned to active duty. I really thought the producers missed an opportunity to really inject an element from the Fleming novels. There are several incidents, many humorous, from the novels Dr. No, You Only Live Twice, and The Man with the Golden Gun, where M consults with Sir James Molony regarding Bond’s health. But who cares about dead white guys anyway?

Meanwhile, it turns out that the guy who tried to kill Bond in Turkey is supposed to be in Shanghai and our cape crusader, er, Bond gets his equipment from the Q branch, a Harry Potter/Rachel Maddow double, and heads off the Blade Runner world of Shanghai. After our bad guy kills a man with what appears to be an unusual caseless weapon, Bond meets Bond babe #2, a bizarre woman who wears too much dark makeup named Severine. She apparently is the key to whereabouts of the Joker, er, the Villain. She apparently went to the same acting school with Craig where actors are taught to mumble their line. Although very beautiful, her screen presence offers little to the movie.

Bond finally meets our Villain on deserted Island presumably in the South China Sea, and the requisite soliloquies are given, not really knowing the reasons motives at time. Unlike the Bond movie of yore, Bond does not give the sardonic banter exhibited in the novels or the early films. It turns out that our Villain is not only the Joker, but a cross between X-men’s Magneto and Hannibal Lector. Raul Silva, played by Javier Bardem, was an operative who worked for Station H under M. Apparently, he was caught by the Chinese and tortured and now he wants M to “think on her sins”. After many plot turns and twist, including battles in central London, we end up in the beautiful hills of Scotland, in stark contrast to illuminated dystopian night of Shanghai, at Bond’s boyhood home “Skyfall” for the final battle reminiscent of the final scenes in Patriot Games, that seems to never end and when it does it leaves Bond in tears. Apparently, Bond’s boyhood was traumatic, but like many things in this movie, we are not really given any reason other than he was orphaned. At the end of the movie, Craig-Bond is wearing a beautiful $2000 Billy Reid tweed overcoat, standing on the roof of MI6 with St Paul and the Union Jack in background, and apparently waiting for Commissioner Gordon to give Bond the “007 signal” stenciled into a search light.

One of things that the movie fails to do is really explain how Raul manages to escape from Chinese detention and amass everything from an army of henchmen who carry exotic weapons, server farms, and attack helicopters. Also, the method in which Silva is deformed is questionable. I cannot say I am expert on this subject; it just did not seem to be plausible to me.

I thought the movie would have been better if all references to Bond had been stripped. Again, the only thing related to the Bond series is the name of the characters. The movie on its own, is okay, but is nothing that Cubby or Ian Fleming would recognize. I am still not sold on Craig. He has aged about 20 years in the past six years since the Craig-Bond series has begun and Craig has this unusual walk, where he doesn’t appeared to be standing fully upright and head seems to bobble. Having Bond constantly walking around, mumbling into a headset microphone is really awkward and inexplicable. Another problem for this film, Bond is almost relegated to a secondary character; it was easy to forget that this was a Bond movie. The humor in this movie is mistimed and falls flat.

I thought the title sequence was interesting. However, I am sorry to report that after staying in the movie theatre to nearly 1:45 in the morning to review all of the credits there was no tribute to the late John Barry whose music has been so much a part of the 50 years of Bond; this is inexcusable. But then again, maybe the best tribute would be not associated with the movie at all.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

`FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE`