Two Hours of Outtakes

Rating: 5/10 (16 March 2016)

You can plainly tell that Daniel Craig's heart was not in it. He mumbles his lines through a mouthful of marbles, as if he thought he had to save his real performance for the big night. The first result of that approach is the gaping vacuum where a strong protagonist should be: James Bond lacks even the barest intimation of charisma, for perhaps the first time. The second result is that, when the film was over, I had absolutely no idea what it was about.
I will admit I'm not really a fan of the series. The overlong action scenes and over-the-top stunts tend to bore me. "Skyfall" promised to be more down to earth, and for the most part lacks the franchise's trademark set-pieces. What action scenes there are, however, go on far too long: for example, Bond fighting a henchman atop a moving train until you've forgotten who's who and why they're brawling with each other, and stopped caring. And while it skips the gadgets and one-liners, it's still a hopelessly slick Hollywood product, staged and lit and digitally enhanced to within an inch of its life.
The plot -- from what I could tell -- seemed to be an extended excuse for the series' continued existence long after the end of the Cold War. Many of the secondary characters argue over the role of old-fashioned spies and intelligence agencies in an era of global terrorism and cyber-criminals, as if preemptively addressing criticism of escapist action films. The villain is a former MI6 agent with a needlessly elaborate plan to wreak vengeance on his former employer, Judi Dench. I think he wins in the end, though by that point in the film, over two hours since it all started, I wasn't paying very close attention.