Adequately entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (19 November 2012)

I wanted to see this as it's been trailed by the UK media and critics as the best Bond film ever. Well, to my mind an impossible job as Sean Connery hung up his toupee decades back – but I thought it could be a good action film for all that. I found it rather entertaining hokum and a passable time-passer, then I saw some of the savage IMDb comments and wondered what I'd missed.
The first 12 minutes are cops chasing robbers chasing cops, but the film quickly resolves itself into  nothing but that. The baddies have stolen a list of names the other baddies wanted to keep secret, 'tis Bond's mission to find out how/why/who/where and instigate liquidation proceedings. The film is a shallow linear and hackneyed adventure thriller yarn told straight – nothing wrong with all of that, but compare it with the contemporary Dark Knight Rises for something equally as nonsensical but with marvellously inventive use of cameras, sets and cgi cartoonery. Favourite bits: the crackers chase opening; the mesmerising scenes in the psychedelic Shanghai skyscraper with Bond calmly letting a stranger get murdered; when trying to get to Mum in central London marvelling at top mad baddie Silva's precision prescience which rivalled that of Paul Muad'Dib in Dune Messiah; the scenes at Skyfall itself, bringing a lot of old fashioned wood into the picture to give it a rosier glow. Craig & Dench in particular out of the muttering cast did a good job with their guttural whisperings. The biggest letdown was the cold blooded and pointless execution of Bond's female consummation of the night before – why do film makers insist on some such gratuitous atrocity, is it only in the hope we'll remember their films fondly?
Overall, it's nothing fantastic but enjoyable and entertaining – and probably the best Bond film since Connery.