A fine mess mirroring our time

Rating: 3/10 (26 October 2012)

*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ***
The attempt at making a smaller-scale Bond with the plot revolving around a personal vendetta did not work. Some Random agent gone nuts - which MI6 hosed - wants payback. I could not make myself care about the man's issues or reasons. The dialogue throughout the movie was dreadfully dull and uninspiring - same goes for the characters. There wasn't even one real joke or attempt at lifting the mood which at least in older Bond movies was the norm.
They murdered the Bond girl. Just like that to show how evil the Random agent gone nuts supposedly is. Thanks to the same guy we also get the most remarkable computer-related doohickey for quite some time. The plot's pacing heavily leans on terribly executed and utterly unbelievable magic, which the writers probably mistook for "hacking". I can't fathom what they had in mind but repeated use of awkward magic steadily maims audience's immersion into a thousand pieces.
After that treatment, probably the most touching part of the movie was the destruction of the Skyfall manor. Every engraved wood panel and chiseled stone block was, unlike this movie, a piece of art in itself. And they leveled it all for the purposes of making fleeting entertainment for Western consumers.
About cinematography: Thanks to digital video capture, dark scenes were immaculately clean, but the image fell apart in brighter outdoor scenes. I don't appreciate the looks of light sources and lighter tones in digital video. It is too big of a tradeoff to get a cleaner picture. Colors were quite realistic (read: boring) which suit the overall tone of the movie well.
Nevertheless the movie had some inspired shots, including a silhouette fistfight against a skyscraper-tall advertisement, sailboat in ocean and again some silhouettes against a burning manor on the moors. The highlight probably was when drowning Bond shot an underwater flare, lighting the water below thin ice and contrasting marvelously with the light of the burning manor above.
A true Bond fan does not leave a Bond movie unwatched, but it is difficult to invent reasons to go watch Skyfall with any great haste. Cinematography saves select parts of the movie, but overall Skyfall is not worth seeing even just for the visuals.