0023 misses essential Bondish elements

Rating: 5/10 (15 November 2012)

After this year's long-awaited and much-acclaimed superhero summer blockbusters (Whedon's 'The Avengers' and Nolan's 'The Dark Knight Rises'), Sam Mendes' 'Skyfall' was to me the first in the row of cinematic adventures (Spielberg's 'Lincoln' and Jackson's first part of 'The Hobbit' still to come) that didn't quite live up to its preceding hype.
The third installment with Daniel Craig as our favourite MI6 high-profiled agent turns out to be a decent movie, though. After four years 007 resurfaces (quite literally in this instant) in a motion picture. And, let's face it, all hail to the 44-years old British actor. Craig is my favorite Bond, ever since 'Casino Royale' (2006); acting cold, emotionally detached, calmly sarcastic, distant, yet also vulnerable, both mentally and physically. He delivers once again a thorough interpretation on the character in 'Skyfall'. Also, cinematography and production design are top-notch throughout the entire film, contributing beyond any doubt to a sweeping visual spectacle. Colours, light, interiors and exteriors, they all add up.
After a thrilling and promising opening, the iconic and unique gun barrel sequence is strangely absent. However, Adele's title song and the animated stunning though repetitive credits even the balance soon enough.
With Bond presumed death after being shot by a colleague (Naomie Harris, who lacks certain depth in acting) and a classified ultra-secret list gone rogue, M (the always magnificent Dame Judi Dench) becomes subject to a personal vendetta in London. MI-6 HQ gets blown sky-high and the intel on operatives gotten from the stolen and decoded list is put online. Luckily, Bond rises from the death and returns to Britain. (Otherwise we would have had the ultimate daring take on a Bond film: one without Bond.) The audience is left clueless on this resurrection, one of 007's self-proclaimed hobbies. Director and writers would seem to have thought hobbies like this are instantly clear to worldwide eyes and would require none contextual footage. First unnecessary plot hole.
The reinvented Q (Ben Whishaw) is a whizz-kid who equips 007 with a Walther PPS coded to the spy's hand print. And that's about it. Oh, and there's a tracker, which one shall hardly call inventive. The plotwise important gadgets, having had great influence in defining both book and film series, are prominent in their nonappearance. Apparently, the nerdy Quartermaster relies more on his computed algorithms ('We don't do explosive pens anymore'), even when they're continuously hacked into miraculously and unexplained by the main villain, the dyed- blond Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Second unnecessary plot hole there. The positive fair note I should jot here on Q, is the comical dialogue he and Bond share. They constantly outmatch each other in their witty use of language. Kudos, script writers, for this one.
Bond tracks the list, after rigourous yet insufficient training, all the way to China. 'Skyfall' is the first in the series having been shot there and that brings some awesomeness to the screen. Bond fails to reclaim the list his boss so desperately wants, but does find his Bond- girl. The list is never again referenced to in the movie, since there are now far more attractive things to chase for our protagonist. Third unnecessary plot hole. In a not-so-brilliant turn of events, Severine (Bérénice Lim Marlohe) takes her new-found lover to Silva, because that's what Bond-girls do. Happy cliché. Marlohe actually is quite a good actress and should've gotten more screen time, which now amounts to a total of twenty minutes max.
All James Bond-films are only as good as the villain who nails them and there's no exception on the rule here. Bardem gives a fine take on Silva, who comes across tormented and revengeful. Even so, he never reaches anywhere near a nightmarish, lasting impression. His motives and past stay shrewd in darkness and are only hinted to, which makes him somewhat hard for the ignorant viewer to relate to. Unfortunately, the script writers themselves had to cope with these consequences of their own negligence, as none of the characters except M are believably interacting with the bad guy either. Just too many spots and dots are left in their respective clouded and unconnected states. An ovation for this fourth unnecessary plot hole shouldn't be unfit.
The last forty minutes or so came as a huge surprise to me. Nothing in teasers or trailers had given away any of it, so I won't here. It's arguably the best part of the last decade in 007 films, shared with the Madagascar crane scenes from 'Casino Royale'. Albert Finney hands a solid performance in a terrific role. The several plot twists near the end, hailed as climactic by both critics and audiences, were, despite their unpredictability, totally unconvincing to me.
And then, right before the end credits, the gun barrel sequence appears. Comes just two hours too late. Bummer.
Other reviewers have already noted the similarities between 'Skyfall' and Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy. To the sharp eye they're overabundant, though I guess they are not disadvantageous to any viewer who still has plans on seeing the aforementioned trilogy, since 'Skyfall' plagiarizes only the best elements of it. Bond without a Batsuit is no Bruce Wayne and never will be.
Concluding, I'd say 'Skyfall' is action-filled eye candy, despite the obvious and numerous plot holes. However, it suffers tremendously from deliberately leaving out many crucial elements to a Bond film. There is basically no Bond-girl, there are basically no Bond-gadgets, there is no pre-title shooting icon and there is basically no explorative interaction between the main characters.
5/10. If it weren't titled, marketed and hyped as a Bond movie, I'd probably rate it 7 or maybe even 8/10.