Great action, great scenes, mediocre story and weak characters

Rating: 7/10 (24 July 2013)

I can see this movie has received very mixed reviews. A lot of IMDb users hates it with a passion, a lot think that it's mediocre, and some loves it. All critics loves it. I was personally loving it during the beginning. The intro song was not the best ever, but it was okay. The intro scenes however were awesome. The action scenes in the beginning were awesome as well, especially the chase scene. The cinematography and soundtrack was great as well. Very beautiful shots of the cities(especially London, felt very "londonish") and landscape. Some of the still shots of Bond were a bit melodramatic but beautiful as well, also; clichées are allowed in a Bond movie (well done clichées that is). The villain was great as well (Javier Bardem is up there as one of the greatest villain actors ever). Overall, the acting was very good.
Now for the bad stuff. The story was a bit weak. I can accept that Bond is pushing the boundaries of realism, but why did he need to get shot, fall 100 feet, land on his back in the water, then get sucked in to a waterfall? It makes no sense. If he just got shot and passed out, and fell 10 feet or something like that, it had been much more acceptable. Not that it matters a lot, but it does bug me a little. I also know that hacking is the new magic in Hollywood, but it became a bit ridiculous in this movie. They should start to become a bit more aware of the fact that the audience is getting more knowledgeable about computers, programming etc. There is no need to present "hacking" as some kind of magic universe where everything is possible, like presenting the hackers monitor as some kind of visual labyrinth in which you need to maneuver through an orb of 1's and 0's, or the annoying "the faster you type, the better you are hacking" rule etc. Some of the characters were also a bit weak. The bond girl in particular, what was up with that?
All in all a good movie, but with some annoying little flaws.