Sadness prevailing

Rating: 3/10 (21 April 2013)

It's a double edged spaghetti we are dealing with here. On one side, this movie is beyond any doubt the signal for the end of the Craig-generated Bond's career. On the other side, one can only hope that the future Bond will manage to be more light-hearted than this incarnation. Since Casino Royale, this series confirmed itself to be a more dark, morose, heartbroken, you-name-it member of the 007 installment. It's not that Craig lacked any charisma, quite the opposite. But his tuff guy persona simply didn't fit too well within the general picture. And on Skyfall, his character's rigid and relatively introverted personality (manky childhood checked and so on) is stunningly complemented by the general anticlimactic and dusty tone. This is the most adequate term to define this movie, in my opinion - anticlimactic. Maybe the heartbroken and introverted Bond would have been as good as any other, should this movie have struggled to achieve higher standards in terms of plot, scenery and so on. But instead, all you get is a rather unconvincing master plan from an ex-007 to whack MI6, abnormally restrained action (the fight scenes don't stand out as very impressive - the dynamics haven't been pumped up too much), and a wide technological gap. It's not that kind of old-school Bond that would pay a visit every now and then to the secret laboratory to see what kind of secret razorburgers the scientists of MI6 had manufactured in order to help him slice a terrorist's pants. Not remotely. No cars, no nothing... It's like a wasteland of the 007 franchise. That doesn't mean that it gets close to a new philosophical plane, it's as superficial as it gets. The actors' performances were quite solid, arguably with the exception of Bardem's slice (won't bug you with his flaws, but after hearing him in several lines you'll get to hate the sounds from the Pac Man game - beep!bloop!blap!).
Grosso modo, a misguided and highly disposable movie. If this franchise is to carry on, it will certainly need new conceptions - maybe a sunnier Bond, maybe a more engaging take on the plot and more thought in the scenery, maybe all of them (best case).