Silly, Overblown, Dumb and Boring.

Rating: 5/10 (7 December 2012)

Silly, Overblown, Dumb and Boring. That's how I would describe this movie in four words. I can't understand how this movie got such positive reviews. The direction was OK and some of the performances great (mostly Bardem's). However the backbone of a movie his it's screenplay and that's were the movie falls completely apart. The screenplay was a mess: the characters dialogues and banter were trite and clichéd, the plot was overblown and idiotic and the character's decisions and actions made little to no sense. The only positive points of the movie were Bardem and Fienes, who gave terrific performances (altough the latter didn't have much to do throughout the movie anyway) and most of all Roger Deakins, whose photography was gorgeous as always. Everything else in the movie was fair to mediocre.
SPOILERS:
Craig's Bond in this movie achieves a all new level of stupidity that kept me wondering on on earth this guy is still alive. Every decision he made was dumb beyond belief. Who would shoot against an airborne war helicopter with an automatic from a window of a old manor? Why didn't he shoot the villain when he was on his way to kill M and still allowed him to press the radio that caused a subway to be rammed against him? Those are just two of the many idiotic decisions that Bond made during the film, not to mention the biggest one of all: taking M to a secluded old manor without any manpower and virtually no weapons. That makes perfect sense! Also, in the end he fails his mission, breaching protocol while doing so and Mallory still reinstates him.