James Bombed: formulaic film-making at its worst.

Rating: 1/10 (4 November 2012)

Choice lines from the script: "What's going on?", "I'm gonna get whoever did this". Judi Dench as ever completely miscast - she seems to be advertising Marks and Spencers ready meals, not running MI6. And indeed, the film itself is about M, not Bond's struggle with global villainy.
I thought Daniel Craig had nailed Bond in Casino Royale, but here he does completely the wrong thing - he makes it look hard. And hard it is, to watch that is. One point - from earlier Bonds, kids of 8 or so learned to play fight and stay cool, to use only necessary 'violence', or invent a way out of a tight spot (in play). From this Bond, they learn to play broody, angry and vicious, and sulk when things go wrong. That's what the iconic Bond has lost.
And then they call in Ralph Fiennes, the world's stiffest actor, to replace the dead Dench M. Have they forgotten it was he who made The Avengers a turkey? Rory Kinnear totally humourless, as is this poor excuse for a Bond film which is more like an episode of 'The Bill'.