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Back to basics with James Bond

Tension might as well be the title of this latest James Bond film — except that it won't have as much magic and power as the word "Skyfall."

The film opens with a big bang — a cold-blooded murder that holds you in its vise-like grip. It holds your breath even more in scene after chase scene; blow after brutal blow — from the mean streets of the United States, the forbidding train tunnel of Turkey, the well-lit Shanghai skyline, the casinos of Macau, the throbbing underground railway system of London, the familiar sights in the United Kingdom.

Everything pulsates with life — the Bond kind of life, with its state-of-the-art gadgets, champagne and women.

One minute, Bond (Daniel Craig) is making techie moviegoers drool with envy as he talks to his Sony Mobile Xperia. The next, he's making every red-blooded male twitch in their seats at the sight of a beautiful woman he's pouring sparkling champagne for.

Heady mix

You look into those eyes and see a heady mix of emotions — suspicion, grit, grief, anger — but never joy. Bond never smiles, he never laughs. He's another version of the Marlboro man — mysterious, all action and less talk.

Thank goodness no such man exists in the real world. Else, all the women he professes to love will tire of that hard-jawed, unreadable macho face.

But it doesn't matter. On the big screen, this blue-eyed Bond is a hero. And like all heroes, he's been defying danger and saving lives for the past 50 years.

This time, Bond and partner agent Eve (Naomie Harris) travel to Turkey to seize back a computer hard drive stolen from a murdered MI6 agent. The missing item contains crucial data about undercover agents in terrorist groups. Bond grapples with his enemy underwater until the scene changes. Did our hero go to his watery grave?

M (Judi Dench), M16 boss, thinks so. She writes his obituary while facing the prospect of retirement. Turns out she got the flak after ordering Eve to pull the trigger that supposedly killed Bond.

M refuses to move on. She explains that technology is not the panacea for all terrorist ills. One can't solve all problems with a push of a gadget button. It's the gold old-fashioned ways versus modern solutions all over again. If modern tools don't work, there are more ways to skin a cat.

Kindred spirit

M finds a kindred spirit in Bond. The guy embraces digital wonders and fights its evils — like hacking -- alright. But he still holds fast to time-honored ways.

Bond returns to his roots not only to literally get away from the vengeful Silva (the brllliant Javier Bardem), but to find solutions. This way, "Skyfall" peeks into Bond's veiled persona and chips away at the lonely orphan's character. That's when "Skyfall" mellows a bit — pausing from its slam bang, jaw-dropping cliffhangers. We know more about the man and what makes him who he is.

Bond is not all high jumps, sophisticated spy toys and the like, after all. Like all of us, he has his inner demons to conquer. And these go all the way back to an imposing ancestral home whose ins and outs he knows so well.

Not everything about his past is damned, though. Bond rediscovers a live-saving solution to the Silva menace in the good old ways — something not even the scheming villain — for all his sophistication — thought of.

In this age of sci-fi films, good old James Bond and his energetic flips, pistol-whipping ways and knack for running like the wind remains as engaging as ever. Agent 007 and his uh, mature boss have changed with the digital times. But they have remained attuned to the world way back when — when crime wasn't committed with a push of a button, when you needed someone like Bond to save the world.

Bond — painfully human that he is in "Skyfall" — has proven that he can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the digital heroes that march in and out of our screens these days.

He has proven that the basics God equipped us with: agility, cunning, and above all, heart, is still the best.

"Skyfall" is a tribute to the human being who has made things — including today's technological wonders — possible. Fifty year after the first Bond film came to life, the tribute is as fitting as ever.