Many, many missteps.

Rating: 4/10 (11 November 2012)

This review really does have spoilers, just to let you know.
SKYFALL has amazing action! One of the strengths of the Daniel Craig Bond films has been unbelievably intense, nerve shredding action sequences, and Skyfall's have lived up to the standard and then some. Except for an unfortunate final act.
Daniel Craig's performance as Bond is superb for the third time in a row. He made the role his own from his first Bond film. His presence is riveting in all of his scenes.
Javier Bardem is a fun villain, as we'd expect. I pretty much rooted for him the whole movie. His odd bleach job is a little annoying, especially when he's trying to run around in the subways in a policeman's uniform.
OK, now that that's over, Let's get into this movie's problems.
#1. More length than story. Like X2, Superman Returns,and Moonrise Kingdom, this movie reaches a point where it should be over, but then drags on for another half hour.
#2. This movie is not really a James Bond film. It is a Judi Dench "M". film with James Bond cameos. Apparently, this being her last, the creators felt they had to center it around her, and give her a massive send off. A Viking funeral, of sorts. It is a sentimental character piece that pays loving tribute to a background character as if she were the heart of the whole franchise. This really wears out its welcome very quickly.
A strength of both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace was that their villains' plans were global and so complex they really couldn't be explained within the context of the films. We, as the audience, were along for the fast paced ride, and just had to snatch the details we were given out of the air as we raced by. It wasn't important to understand every facet of the enemy, and that was for the better.
So, to bring this back to the point, Raoul Silva's plans, at first intriguing and exciting, suddenly become simply about his obsession with M. In fact, getting back at her and trying to win her love seem to be his only motivations. It's really kind of a letdown.
#3. Another strength of the Bond films was that moving or emotional content wasn't up front, but rather shone unexpectedly through the cracks, and was all the more moving and gave the films substance through their subtlety.
In SKYFALL, that subtlety is replaced with heavy-handed, unwelcome sentimentality. All the fawning over Dench is bad enough, culminating in a ridiculous parliamentary inquiry where she pontificates, but even that is really just a prelude to the film's worst aspect, the final act, where Bond takes her to his parents' stately abandoned Scottish manor to await a siege.
It's a mistake to start shining a light into Bond's past if all they're going to reveal comes out of Harlequin romances. The dashing fellow from the Scottish highlands who takes the lady to his stately manor to save her life... really? THIS lady? But it's not just romance novels that this film evokes. It also evokes comic books. Now Bond is a tormented orphan (like Batman!) with a faithful manservant (Like Batman!) who has a mansion full of secret passages (like Batman!)... It's been noted that Mendes says he was inspired by Nolan's Batman films. Well, it really shows.
Another dubious thing about this reveal is that it is ALSO revealed that "James Bond" is in fact his actual name. I liked it better when it seemed to have been a cover name. But that's just me.
We go through an awful lot of drawn out siege-style action at the end of this movie that somehow reminded me of both Straw Dogs AND the end of Pineapple Express except that it's just not all that interesting, because it's only about protecting Judi Dench, who had apparently some years prior deliberately blown Silva's cover and let the Chinese have him (???) for reasons she gives that seem pretty weak... She's not all that likable and I wasn't that invested in wanting her to survive. Which means I wasn't that invested in the actual plot of this M. movie.