****An excerpt of a review recently posted on Schaeffer's Ghost:
There are a number of recurring themes throughout the film, most notably the tension between young and old, past and future. Bond and M are seen as relics of a bygone age (and Bond himself is feeling his years in a way we haven’t really seen before). The British government has begun to question not only M’s leadership, but even the necessity of MI6 itself. Even within MI6 this tension is present—the elderly Q has been replaced by a younger model (Ben Whishaw, seen recently in Cloud Atlas) who prefers computers to silly gadgets, and sees agents as necessary only when a trigger must be pulled. But Silva is likewise a wiz with computers, and Bond and M eventually realize that in order to defeat him, they need to take the battle to their own outdated turf.
The resulting film has, of necessity, a delightful throwback feel. We get precious little in the way of new gadgets (I only counted two, one of which is clearly mocked as anything but innovative), but we are reunited with an old friend of the vehicular variety, which more than makes up for Q’s unimpressive offerings. Plus we get to see Bond and company improvise their own arsenal of sorts, with impressive results. Michael Westen would be proud (as would MacGyver). Also, for those concerned about such things, I can confirm that Bond is still a martini man (shaken, not stirred), that he has not lost his flair for self-introduction, that he still knows how to use a Walther PPK, and that there’s still nothing like an Aston Martin DB5.Full review available here.
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