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Rating: 7/10 (19 November 2012)

James Bond's latest adventure may not be the game-changing piece of cinema that I was hoping for (after CASINO ROYALE, with its new heights of intense thrills and heartfelt emotion), but at least it's a step up from Bond's previous misfire, QUANTUM OF SOLACE. SKYFALL sees Daniel Craig returning to the role for a third time, and there's a distinctly different feel to his story this time around: he's ageing, in many ways past it, something of a dinosaur in a world of youth. The suddenness of this transformation is surprising, but at least it marks new territory for the series.
Not so elsewhere, as for the first time in the Craig canon we see the return of many familiar tropes: Q is back (in the guise of the remarkable Ben Whishaw), along with Moneypenny, the gadgets, the cars. It feels a little odd to see these much-loved elements returning to the fold a mere two films after the film that made a show of doing away with them altogether, but nonetheless they're handled well and with a minimum of both fuss and cheesiness.
A shame, then, that all of this hinges on a central plot that actually turns out to be, well, pretty unremarkable. The slightly creepy Javier Bardem makes for a memorable bad guy – sometimes for all the wrong reasons – but the plot is nothing more than a simple revenge story, and an early sub-plot about Bond's disappearance turns out to have little to do with anything other than wasting forty minutes of the running time. At 2 hours, 23 minutes, SKYFALL feels a little sluggish in places, flabby when it should be pushing on with momentum.
The good news is that the action is much better than that of the previous outing. Marc Forster didn't know what he was doing in his attempts to emulate the shaky-cam work of Paul Greengrass, but director Sam Mendes is here confident enough to jettison the shaky-cam in favour of some elaborate, big budget, old-fashioned set pieces. A blistering chase sequence kicks things off and an explosive home invasion style climax ends things, and in between we get some great stuff going on in the Tube. A trip to Shanghai is less successful, but for the most part, SKYFALL works. Yes, the action is CGI heavy at all times, but this is decent CGI that adds rather than detracts from the experience.
Acting-wise, the film is less successful. For the first time, Craig doesn't feel particularly likable here. His quips and wisecracks have the effect of making him seem conceited rather than smart, and the hot-pot of writers who crafted the script are far too obsessed with creating pretentiously clever lines so that it really grates sometimes. Judi Dench offers the same one-dimensional bullishness that she's been slapping out since Goldeneye, but Ralph Fiennes is a welcome addition to the rank of officials and Rory Kinnear's return is another plus. Bardem is less impressive, hissing out lines like he's in a pantomime, and of the Bond girls Naomie Harris struggles with a light and superfluous character. Far better is Berenice Marlohe as a sultry femme fatale, although sadly she's only given extremely limited screen time. Still, SKYFALL is nothing less than an entertaining movie, despite the many plot holes and occasional inanities; fans will be in their element.