Franchise in a hype tornado

Rating: 3/10 (2 March 2013)

Although it's been well reviewed, I thought I would add my weight to the argument. To give this some context, I watched it on DVD when I was ready to watch anything and it only needed to be passably entertaining to keep me happy.
The longer the movie went on, the harder it was to stay immersed. There were simply so many clunky issues with this movie that by the time we arrived at 'Skyfall', I'd all but dropped out.
A number of things really surprised me here & I'm going to bullet list them out of sheer laziness:
* The dialogue was really strained in several scenes. For a top budget movie I was left surprisingly uncomfortable at the exchanges between M & 007.
* I fail to understand how anyone who's taken a bullet to the chest can duke it out with an assassin on top of a train.
* Just where did Moneypenny hit 007 with that shot? How did he fall 200ft in to raging torrents of swirling water, slide down a huge waterfall & still survive. The incident was superfluous as far as the writers were concerned. He simply survives because he's 007 and we don't need to know the reasons.
* When 007 meets the antagonist's girlfriend at the Casino - did I miss some sexual tension? To my mind, she (and I never did pick up her name, which is a sign of a red shirt if ever I've seen it) was exuding fear and looking for help under duress. Yet up pops Bond on her yacht and slips in to her shower for a shag. This seemed demeaning to me and a poorly realised echo of yesterdays Bond. Sheer tokenism.
* You're working for the top government military intelligence establishment in the UK, yet you're stupid enough to join the super villain's laptop to the corporate network (which happens to be a flat structure with no boundaries). You're Co-co the Clown? No! Your designated title is Q and you're a prick. Surely after such a massive error of judgement, causing tens of deaths, we're not going to have to see his face in the follow up?
* Just why did Silva derail that tube train? Perhaps I missed something here but it seemed pointless. Worse still, the effects were dire and smacked of a Hornby closeup in a studio.
* I'm presuming that as Bond decided to whisk M up off in to the highlands rather than follow set protocols - combined with the fact that she died, means that he'll be relegated to desk jockey along with Moneypenny.
The only thing this movie does better than oozing stupidity is telegraphing the obvious.
We could never see

The fact that an enemy would try and kill Bond with the gun that was locked to Bond's palm print.

That Silva actually wanted to get inside the new MI6 HQ.

That the laptop was primed to free him.

The fact that M was going to be replaced - and hence, likely to die to add gravity to the story.

As I stood there, chained to the rock of movie injustice, eagle pecking at my liver, I thought things could get no worse. Then we get the 'My name's Eve Moneypenny' scene. Honestly - was this script sponsored by Edam or something? Above all, the movie appears to have nothing more at the heart of it than a simple 'over-cooked' revenge story that's hard to believe. Javier Bardem had real potential to be an outstanding super villain, demonstrating some real awkward tension when we first meet him. Yet, the abysmal realisation of Silva in the script gives him no room to redeem the movie.
3/10 - and two of those stars were for the fantastic title sequence.