Up there with the best but...

Rating: 7/10 (27 January 2013)

I really liked this Bond. I liked what the producers were trying to do with Quantum and thought that Casino was overrated. Been there seen that, albeit with different actors. QoS had style but was badly fragmented. Skyfall delivers on the potential that casting Daniel Craig offers. This is not Bourne reborn, this is Bond reborn. Hiring Sam Mendes was a very smart move and the film feels a little more grown up, a little more intelligent as a result. It's also visually very stylish in an understated way. Berenice Marlohe rather than Famke Jansen. It's by no means perfect. The last reel has "let's keep within budget" written all over it and that's a shame. Destroying an isolated house in the Scottish highlands smells of cheap and all the press-fed justification re Bond's childhood is bullshit. This was a budgetary decision and the film suffers as a result. That said, it's still one of the best. There are signs of too many cooks at work. Lines like "I never did like the house" belong to another Bond and point to a loss of nerve but Sam Mendes and Daniel Craig have finally laid the ghost of Connery.