Enjoyable but ultimately very disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (13 February 2013)

Really enjoyed it while watching and was surprised to learn the actual running time as it went by quickly for me. But starting near the end and certainly afterwards, I'm quite disappointed.
I'm not usually a stickler about plot holes, but they really degrade this effort overall.
The essential story here is a disgruntled agent comes back to harm M. MI6 and Bond condone a hundred needless deaths to protect a very old figurehead who dies anyway, and we're to be happy with the outcome? Even worse, she makes the point earlier that on multiple occasions she cheerfully sacrificed the lives of individual agents (Silva, Ronson, Bond) to save the lives of others. Why doesn't she or the plot disrespect that philosophy? The villain didn't pose much of a threat to the world. He wanted to get back at his mother figure, and all the mayhem was mostly caused by attempts to stop him.
The spectacular opening sequence aside, nothing actually happened, and there wasn't any jeopardy beyond what MI6 themselves provoked.
So much of the traditionally cleverness of a Bond film was seemingly overlooked. We see his hands are unsteady, so why doesn't that come into play later? He magically becomes a crack shot, rendering his age and growing infirmity pointless as the film moves along. Sure he has to use the duelling pistol and hang from the elevator, but these challenges are never used in any clever way.
Same with the gadgets. They brush it aside with an insulting comment that "we don't go in for the exploding pens anymore". Hey guess what, the audiences do. I'm not slavish about following the more hackneyed conventions of the Bond films, but admitting you have no clever gadgets by slighting the audience for expecting it is just weak.
The gadgets we do get are a bland homing beacon and a fingerprint gun which isn't new, isn't impressive, and both end up being utilized in banal fashion.
They used a corny 1980's level of digital espionage, where hacking always has some visually stunning and graphical representation, and defeating it is just a matter of wild guessing.
The only remotely clever bits are badly telegraphed, like Kincade throwing the dagger on the table and repeating the theme 'the old ways are best'. When a priest hole is mentioned, you know it's going to be used, and when Moneypenny discusses field work with Bond, you see that coming too. Everything just seemed so forced.
There was also so much rehashing. Rooftop motorcycles is cool, but it's a re-run. Same with the hall of mirrors in Shanghai, and the lusty Latino villain.
Once they were at the underground and it turned into a cop shootout movie I started to question what I was seeing.
The third act prolongs the senseless gunfight theme with Bond inexplicably going there to defend his old childhood cottage, which even he doesn't care about.
They also failed on the tradition of cleverly turning peril for Bond into enemy deaths. The komodo dragon was highly telegraphed, and was never really a threat to Bond. And while the internet can debate the finer points of choking someone's carotid versus holding them underwater, the drowning/choking enemy kill was an uninteresting waste of a situation. A race to a breathing hole big enough for only one to survive, a rope that becomes a tug of Bond versus henchman, maybe a shot of an enemy pressed up against the ice, so close to living but quite making it. Any would be more clever than a Where was the Bond wit? "Did you kill Patrice?" Fans wait to hear a Bond response: "I dropped him off in Shanghai" or "We had to let him go." Nope, he just says: "Yes" I'm not asking for stand-up routine, just some token realization of who the character is after 20+ movies.
I think why I'm most disappointed is this could have been so much better. A traditional Bond would have cleverly managed to save Severine on the Ghost Island, rather than passively allowing her murder. And why did he stand around and just wait for the sniper murder to occur? And what was the point or connection of the art heist sniper to Silva? I'm not insisting they slavishly adhere to formula, but give a little respect to what a Bond movie is about.
Yes M had to die off given how many years elapse between releases, but it didn't need to be the only event of the movie.
When I hear about millions spent on an underwater tank for no effect, I wonder if some of that budget could have gone into script review. Then I hear the script had 13 re-writes, yet nobody saw the big picture which is that after the opening sequence, nothing really happens, the world isn't in much jeopardy, there's just a disturbed former agent with a narrow vendetta followed by extended shootouts.