Quantum of Solace (2008)

Genre

Action | Thriller

Director

Marc Forster

Country

UK | USA

Cast

Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Gemma Arterton, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright, Judi Dench, Anatole Taubman, David Harbour, Joaquin Cosio, Fernando Guillén Cuervo, Jesper Christensen, Rory Kinnear, Paul Ritter, Tim Pigott-Smith, Neil Jackson, Simon Kassianides, Stana Katic

Storyline

James Bond (Daniel Craig) descends into mystery as he tries to stop a mysterious organization from eliminating a country's most valuable resource. All the while, he still tries to seek revenge over the death of his love.

Opinion

A week ago "Casino Royale" made me a very happy person, because after weeks and weeks I finally fully enjoyed a Bond flick. It was a different Bond than the one I was used to, but I loved it/him. Unfortunately I cannot say the same about "Quantum of Solace", a direct sequel that immediately drops quality mainly because of its sloppy direction and poor writing.

The plot to this film really allows James Bond to show his darker side which isn't necessarily a bad thing - actually, a lot of sequels are darker than the previous film - but the problem is that the human-ish Bond I got to love in "Casino Royale" is gone, and once again he is nothing more than a killing machine: the invincible, invulnerable and infallible Bond. He is bulletproof, he is fireproof, he is everything-proof, I actually surprised he doesn't fly.

The plot itself isn't tremendously bad if you consider "Quantum of Solace" only as an action film. But when it comes to Bond films, you can't simply consider them as action flicks as espionage should play a huge part in the story. Unfortunately here there is not spy material.

As for the action, there's plenty of it, but it completely lacks any excitement. And here comes Marc Forster's direction. While he quite knows his way around quieter moments, he completely loses it when dealing with action sequences, which are really nothing more than short random bursts from different angles, filmed and edited in a very poor way which makes the scenes hard to follow.

Daniel Craig still does a nice job as James Bond, and I still don't get all the hate. It's not like he doesn't deserve to play Bond, it's that this Bond doesn't deserve to be played by him in my opinion. Mathieu Amalric - who I loved in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" - does pull off a nice performance as the villain, but he was a bit of a disappointment after the brilliant LeChiffre - the writers don't seem to care much for his character. Judi Dench gets more screen time this time around, and she still does a good job as M.