Skyfall, the 23rd in the James Bond series, released last week; and as is the case with most Bond movies, there was a hurricane effect in the movie halls.
Sam Mendes, who directs Skyfall, penetrates through the action layers and unravels chinks in the armours of Bond and his boss M – played brilliantly by Daniel Craig and Judi Dench respectively.
An extract from John Pearson's 'The Life of Ian Fleming' provides some 'masala': "There is reason for thinking that a more telling lead to the real identity of M lies in the fact that as a boy Fleming often called his mother M....while Fleming was young, his mother was certainly one of the few people he was frightened of, and her sternness towards him, her unexplained demands, and her remorseless insistence on success find a curious and constant echo in the way M handles that hard-ridden, hard killing agent 007." And it is that effort towards detailing the characters of M and Bond, and of course the psychopathic villain (superbly enacted by Javier Bardem), that takes Skyfall a few notches above the rest of the series. There is no denying that Bond is ageing; he is surrounded by fewer scantily-clad dolls, and there are no miracle gadgets.
Perhaps for the first time the footage offered to M is substantially longer than all other actors (barring Daniel Craig and the villain). And apart from the fact that the Jaguars and the Range Rovers shown are products of an Indian multi-national, the last scene involving M and Bond has surely been inspired by a number of Bollywood productions!
Maybe we can expect a Hindi remake of Skyfall soon – Ambergira?!
Read More...