An all-around winner... except for the script

Rating: 7/10 (29 October 2012)

It is a pleasure to eventually watch a Bond movie that is not just a quick and dirty actioneer. Especially since the franchise, in its Daniel Craig days, had clearly accepted the Greengrass/Bourne way to shoot action as a basic requirement. All-out action is still here but the other scenes are not just rushed intermezzi. Efficiency is not the only thing that matters here as opposed to the 22 previous instalments.
The villain is good. The character is perfectly tailored and brilliantly flesh out by Javier Bardem, but then the script forgets to build an engaging story around him. OK we didn't need a 23rd variation on a plot to rule the World, and it was an interesting idea to have the villain hunt down 007 instead of the usual formula with Bond sneaking inside the villain's base. But this should have been a -suspenseful- beginning, this cannot be a climactic ending.
Anyway Craig's Bond really shifts the paradigm. He is a somber agent only enjoying high life and hot gals in between brooding phases. Before Craig 007 was a comics hero, then they wanted to make him more human (the original Casino Royale story more or less implied this), for fear of wearing out the audience expectations after so many sequels, copycats and - worst of all - spoofs. Having grown up with the lighter-hearted Connery and Moore versions it is difficult to feel the same buoyant enthusiasm. Allegedly Licence to kill was a flop because James Bond had suddenly become a violent machine with hardly a sense of humour. Then Brosnan was the silliest of all. Skyfall goes so far as reaching for the hero's youth backstory. Let's say there's a backstory but we don't want to watch 007 with a shrink. Digging up backstories is really a lazy screenwriter's hack job.
Fortunately images and action are both great in the last part, but then you feel you was given the wrong medicine. This could have been the setting for a Living dead or Vampire movie shootout, but this bucolic/pyrotechnic ending really doesn't feel like a Bond movie Third Act.
So, I can appreciated the different Bond as played by Daniel Craig and I certainly appreciated to watch 007 move around in a more polished product, but I still need some real creative story to be told around these. Is the franchise turning into a series? Including some surprise at the end of the season? Some can't wait to watch Bond 24, not me. My expectations were quite low for Skyfall and I was able to enjoy it despite its flaw, but now I am suspicious, I am expecting them to reproduce only the less good parts.