Skyfall

I appear to have joined that small club who were disappointed with SKYFALL. I know many have loved it and the critics are raving, but I confess to being bewildered. The actors are fantastic and I enjoyed their performances. My problem lies with the script and the leaden direction. Films are very rarely boring but Skyfall…? (If you haven’t seen the film, look away!) The plot: Rogue agent wants to kill M. Judi Dench is a marvel, but taking the plot on it’s own merits…who cares about M? Bond villains want to take over the world, hold Presidents to ransom, steal the world’s money. This guy just wants to kill M. And takes two long hours to fail. Bond: Bond get’s killed (obviously not) and then takes an hour of film time to recuperate until he is ready to take on our villain. Marvellous as Craig is, I struggled to find anything very interesting about watching Bond retrain. His hand shakes. His hand stops shaking. We’re all getting old. Is that it? Bond girl: Berenice Marlohe is a perfect Bond girl – and lasts five minutes. No romance, no drama…she has one scene and dies. The only shocking thing about this moment is that you realise they’ve lost the plot! Action sequences: the shoot-out in Parliament is so amateur it would have been cut from The Bill. The grand finale: Bond villain walks endlessly around a house throwing the odd bomb through a window. The Bourne Trilogy is a brilliant example of action drama with a thrilling lead actor under threat. It makes Skyfall feel very old fashioned. It seems to rely entirely on our love of Judi Dench – and I adore Judi Dench – but I really don’t care what happens to M! If they want to kill Ralph Fiennes in the next film, be my guest, but please do it in the first 5 minutes and get on with a film! And what genius thought of the title? “I know, we’ll name it after the house James Bond was born in”. Who in their right minds would ever name a house Skyfall?!