Skyfall

When you have Sam Mendes don the director's cap, your expectations are Sky High!!! And when Javier Bardem is cast as the villain, the expectations become higher than Sky!!! And when the movie opens to great reviews, the expectation are hurtled to the nearest planet!!! And when the movie opens to a Spectacular begining with an Un Bond Like exit for James down the cascading waterfalls, well your expectations soar even further. With the beautifully shot Shanghai sequence in the night, the Shangai skyline and stunt choreography dazzle and will be etched in your memory for a long time,  here is where the fall starts and what a free fall it is!!!! While Bond has inspired the Bourne Franchise, the MI franchise and even the making of the First Sherlock Holmes(have not seen the second part) have been inspired by Bond. I thought Bond inspired people to travel around the world and took his viewers along with them for a grand treat with some rollicking action. With Sam Mendes one would expected the action to be intertwined with definite cerebral stimulations . Alas!!! there is not an iota of it!!! Action, there is, in a stuttered fashion and the motives of the villain cliched!!! For me the greatest disappointment probably is the casting of Bardem. Bardem was at his menacing best as a beast in NO country for Old Men. One does not understand the compulsion for him to emulate 'Jokeresque' persona.