Not too bad

Rating: 6/10 (25 June 2013)

After hearing a lot of glowing reports on this, I thought I'd give it a spin.
Skyfall is a Bond movie, but more so, and less so. More so, because the story is fluff, the (female) characters are instantly forgettable and Bond's dialog is the standard sequence of somewhat fun but trite one liners.
It's less of a Bond movie because Bond is in bad shape. And I'm not talking about the main plot device either - from the first moments of the movie he can't hit a a single target with his mainstay Walther PPK. He constantly gets outwitted and outmaneuvered. His superior, M, is so stupid that she carries a torch around at the finale, evidently just so the bad guy can track her easily. That bad guy is laughable too - not badly acted, mind (some descent acting there) - but laughable in his motivations, his plans and their execution. And it's not in a fun Bond way either.
Simple fact is: Bond is a superhero, and a very shabby one. He needs his spit and polish to shine, and breaking him down, as this movie does to show us a catharsis of his character, obviously to reposition him to better face market demands in 2012, robs him of his purpose. Bond needs to be superior - he IS the superhuman without need of aliens, mythology or magic.
And that is the only positive thing I took away from Skyfall: that at the end, we see him back in the old office, ready for some REAL work.
Skyfall serves a purpose, and that purpose has been met - just. But as a singular movie, it's very, very forgettable, and that is unforgivable for a character potentially as epic as Bond, James Bond.