Enough already! Kill the Buddha!

Rating: 3/10 (17 November 2012)

Skyfall.
Or should that be Scuffle? From the frenetic opening sequence I thought to myself, oh no, not again, not quantum of solace all over Admittedly, it wasn't quite as terrible as QOS - there was a fine title sequence and something of a storyline here, but the fast, 5 frames a second, explosion-filled, 'most-is-more' juvenility was still ever-present, a philosophy that is symptomatic of today's economic and metaphysical decline. Furthermore, Daniel Craig, bless him, is completely devoid of any quality whatsoever to the point that where towards the end standing at the head of the pass of Glencoe in a typically misty morning, he utters dispiritedly, plagiarising both Terminator and The Dark Knight Rises (both of whom had some feeling in it), 'There's a storm coming..'. As blank as a blank cheque.
No, Daniel, there is no storm coming. What is coming is the usual third act of explosions and gunfire and dead bodies and hesitations and more gunfire, and a helicopter and more hesitations and of course the cliché just-in-time-finishing-off-the-baddie. What is wrong with these baddies? Have they not seen any action films before? Have they lived a life completely devoid of cinema and DVDs? Do they not realise that he who hesitates is doomed, and that he who hesitates not once but three times is even more doomed? But no, obviously not. It's just an insult, plain and simple, and completely negates any intelligence that you had hitherto invested in the typically dastardly Bond baddie. It's pathetic. It might be entertaining for a 12 year old and then it dawns on me, most grown ups who are lauding this are 12 year olds.
For someone who has been showered with accolades in the past several weeks for being the 'best Bond' in the 'best Bond film ever', Craig is not even man enough to say, 'C'mon, c'mon, surely not.' He just sits there, all dolled up like he just fell out of an action man box and smiles. He is terrible as Bond and the fact that many critics laud him as the best is indicative of their invertebrate status as human beings and the confined boxes they operate within (their fear of standing up and kicking against the pricks). OK, so Casino Royale and Craig's entrance to the Bond franchise was a fine piece of work (thanks for the most part to the gentle pacing, the bubbling menace from Mads Mikkelson's 'Le Chiffre' character, and some outstanding set-pieces). There was also, like in so many cases of artistic endeavor, a fair bit of beginner's luck involved on the part of Craig in his alternative view of the chauvinistic spy.
No such luck in Skyfall. It is simply cliché after cliché in a monumental two and a half hour grand cliché, eventually ending up with Albert Finney (who looks as if he's just been dug out from Rannoch Moor itself) telling the baddies before blowing them away with his sawn-off shotgun, 'Welcome to Scotland'. OK, I smiled, maybe even chuckled, but only because of the berserker spirit we Scots have in the depths of our hearts. Our backbone (once upon a time) stood upright. Where is the backbone of these film critics who ordinarily despair at such cliché-ridden acts of violence and such facile 'most-is-more' enactings? Suddenly, when watching Skyfall, they become blind and deaf, clutching onto their careers for dear life lest they lose their jobs, their livelihood, for daring to question the work of such monumental status-men. To be sure, Scuffle is not without its moments - I can think of two - but in a film that is almost three hours long, surely this is not good enough.
In the orient, though perhaps not in Shanghai's obnoxious cityscape, they have a saying that in order to reach enlightenment, first you must kill the Buddha. Well, I say, enough already with Bond. It's all getting rather tired and weak. Kill him already. Kill the Bond.