The plot falls apart and almost brings down the Bond franchise along with itself. Remarkably stupid!
The third comment on this page (spoilers aplenty) takes apart the whole ludicrous story line.
PS: I'm afraid they will take down the comment, so I reproduce it below the fold. Spoiler alert!
3 - Aaron Vandegriff
"What do you expect from a Bond movie?", is what I keep hearing when I complain that this movie is crap for plot and sequence even though every actor is exemplary. I love Ben Whishaw as Q and even Ralph Fiennes is perfect as the hard-nosed MI6 controller. Eve is a little distracting, but it's the writing, not her acting. I like the back story on Moneypenny, but they even screwed that up. Daniel Craig couldn't have done a better job with what he was given, but it was a load of crap.
How unbelievable and uninteresting is this plot; 20 years ago, a hot shot MI6 field agent was pushing the limits of his job for the benefit of his country and since he was creating such a problem, M decides to trade him for other agents' lives causing him to go insane in the custody of terrorists who torture him for years. When he finds out he was betrayed, his one (insane) mission is to make M's life miserable and eventually kill her. This is one of the few Bond movies where the evil villain makes his entire plan come to fruition. Lots of people die including M and we can have lots of crazy stunts and chase scenes along the way
First, let's get a computer and put the names of all undercover agents in terrorist organizations in one place and then take that computer to Turkey where someone steals it because they have inside information where it will be. That sounds even more stupid than attaching GPS devices to guns and giving them to the Mexican cartel and nobody thinks that makes a believable plot either. Next, put Bond on the trail of the guy 30 seconds after he steals it with a fresh-out field agent who drives poorly and eventually shoots and kills him. Bond will be patronizing, sexist and specifically tell her she's not qualified for the job and that will be a funny love interest story because that's what people do in real life; you're sh1t, let's have sex. Setting up the "running theme" of the whole movie, Bond wants to help one of the agents who is shot, but M orders him to leave the guy because the information is more important. Dumbing down for a "Bond audience" makes sense, but everything in this movie is patronizing and insulting. I should have watched Triple X or Fast and the Furious 6. Sam Mendes directed American Beauty, but must have either had hand cuffs for this or he's phoning it in after being tortured by terrorists for years.
To hint at the identity of the big bad guy, someone hacks into MI6 computers (easy for an agent that was in the field 20 years ago) and blows up M's office to show whom he hates, but obviously he didn't want to kill her yet. Everyone knows that if you blow up the MI6 building, they will just move underground where you've been waiting for them, because MI6 is predictable. He's already hacked into the MI6 network including M's laptop in the car and the computer on her desk is the source of the problem before the explosion. This will be important later.
Now of course when everyone thinks Bond is dead, he decides to retire so we can see him drinking shirtless, having sex with beautiful native women, and the perquisite drinking game with a big scorpion, but luckily it's somewhere with English CNN so he sees MI6 blown up and decides to go back to work. They have to make sure he's fit to go back in the field, but he's not, but they let him go anyway (why make him take the tests?), so M is betraying him by letting him work when he's not ready? She'll pay for her sins.
In Shanghai the mercenary guy is on another mission and Bond accidentally kills him after letting him finish his assassination task. Why not stop him before? Oh, he's probably killing another bad guy so it's ok. Kill the assassin and find a clue to your next clue in Macau where you get hints about how crazy the big bad guy is from a scared prostitute. Kill some more bad guys and let the hook3r lead you to the big bad guy who owns an island presumably off the coast of China (where they are lax about that kind of thing) now an abandoned city. Crazy bad guy hits on Bond and there's a little uncomfortable flirting back and forth. Promiscuous homosexual plot points are fine, but I have no idea why you would put this here. The point beaten into our heads is that Bond and the bad guy are the same at different stages and they were "brothers" or sympatico or maybe even Darth Vader and Luke, but this was like some anti-homophobic campaign to prove that JB is a modern guy which is blatantly more disgusting than the disgust they were going for in all the close-minded people.
So, call in the cavalry and capture the bad guy, but make sure you let the wh0re die in a crazy gun game right before because her character has no arc in the plot (what plot?). Luckily you get the big bad guy's laptop which has everything on it. That room full of servers didn't have anything interesting, right? MI6 doesn't have much experience with computers so they just take the bad guys computer and plug it into the network (the one already infected in an earlier scene) and it infects it again and opens all the doors. Why are all the doors connected to the network including the one holding the baddest of bad guys? So we can set up a chase scene, of course.
So what does the bad guy do after escaping again? Try to destroy Bond with an empty tube train at rush hour. Then he goes to a meeting with the head of MI6 and the Prime Minister and walks in with two guys with guns. Why is security so lax in this country? Why not wait until she's in her car or at home (where Bond can sneak right in)? Why get a whole island and plan all this stupid crap? If you waited until she was in her office for the bomb to go off, we could skip all this and it would have been a better movie.
Where should we go next? The best thing to do is go some place remote and have an old lady and some new character old guy from Harry Potter help you defend the house where you grew up from an army of guys with guns, explosives and a helicopter. Destroy the house, a vintage car and talk about your childhood. Did this whole script get written because Judi Dench said she wouldn't do any more Bond movies? Secret tunnels, frozen lochs, old church on the hill, dynamite, your dad's hunting rifle, we need a lovable old butler like in the Batman movies. Is Sean Connery available? No? How about Albert Finney?
Final fight; crazy bad guy decides to spare lovable old butler character, old mom embraces bad guy in death grip, bad guy about to destroy mortally wounded mom, Bond throws a knife to kill bad guy, bad guy makes funny face and noise (giggles from the audience), mom dies telling her favorite son she did something right. Happy ending because Ralph Fiennes can take over this end-of-career coast role. Time for another movie poster pose.
Add a final scene for Bond to say more mean things to Moneypenny so she decides to be a secretary. Now there will be awkward banter whenever Bond visits M. Remember when I shaved you in Macau and you used your position of authority to break my spirit and destroy my soul? From now on I'll ask you to marry me when you come visit.
What a waste of a movie and I can't believe I just wasted my time reviewing it. I didn't think I could ever say this, but it competes with Diamonds Are Forever for worst Bond movie ever. Ugh.