Blu-Ray movie review of Quantum of Solace
March 27, 2009
The second Bond movie by Daniel Craig seems too veered off from the great start by the Casino Royale. It isn’t a bad movie by any measure. It just seems to try little too hard to emulate the Casino Royale’s success. The great action sequences are all present. The foot chase, the car chase, and some all out shootouts. All the great elements of a great action film are present in the Quantum of Solace. But, incoherent plot that is thin on central focus takes away from a great movie.
The plot picks up where Casino Royale left off. That is, with Vesper dead and James Bond stinging from the loss. One thing leads to another and Bond is on the trail of the people responsible for her death. The movie jumps from location to location with inevitable car chase and shoot em ups in between. At each location, Bond uncovers little more of the menace. However, M is unconvinced that there is menace and Bond is after revenge. Eventually, Bond and the obligatory female character, Olga Kurylenko, arrive in South America dealing with the bad guys.
This isn’t the best Bond film nor is it the worst. After the Casino Royale set the bar high, it was expected that this effort wouldn’t be as good. Regardless, it certainly is not a big disappointment. All the action sequences are top of the line. The opening car chase sets the tone for the entire movie and the subsequent action sequences don’t disappoint. The female characters were on the weak side but that was to be expected after the death of Vesper. Overall, it is an enjoyable action flick if you don’t have big expectation from the Casino Royale.
What do you think about this movie? Please leave your thoughts below.
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Tell Me if You’ve Seen This Before
Producer says, “Lets make a movie.” Writer says, “But we don’t have a story.” Producer says, “Who, cares. I need some money so just toss together all the time worn scenes of old action movies.”
Proof in order (tell me if these are familiar): car chase; foot chase; fight next to ringing church bell; fall through sky light; fight on scaffolding; swing from ropes; grab gun at last second and shoot bad guy with unrealistic shot; boat chase; two airplanes in middle of nowhere desert ready to fly; unrealistic airplane chase scene in canyons; two people – one chute – jump at last moment from plane and with just 3 seconds of chute deployment at 135 mph happen to land in the only deep crevice in the desert; pretty girls in cars always show up at right moment; girl wants to kill bad people who killed her parents; bad people want to control resources; bad people are a secret organization; secret agent is suspect; finally, jump from burning building.
Now the real negatives: To make all the above seem a little different they used a lot of quickly changing and nauseating camera angles which totally fragments the story. Actors who can only memorize one line at a time which adds to the fragmented incoherence of the story. A supposedly high tech touch screen which is old school to my iTouch.
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Where’s the story?
I will be the first to admit that I’m not much of a Bond fan. I’ve never read one of Ian Fleming’s books and this is only about the 4th Bond film I’ve watched. Unfortunately, Quantum of Solice reminded me why.
I could only make it through about an hour of the movie. The non-stop violence got old very quickly. I saw Casino Royale, Mr. Craig’s first Bond outing, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I’m not sure if it was because I thought Mr. Craig was a better Bond or what–but it certainly had more story. Quantum had minimal storyline used, solely it would appear, as a means of stringing together multiple chase scenes and shootings. With testosterone overflow, they were going for the lowest common denominator with this one. And there’s certainly an audience for such…
To give credit where it’s due, however, the scenery was lovely.
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A Disappointing Bond Movie
As a 65 year old woman who has seen all the Bond movies, I was so disappointed in this one. I loved Casino Royale and expected something on the same level, but instead I got a chopped up, difficult to follow movie which made me want to fast forward through most of it.
Where were the `cool’ gadgets, the pretty gals, the glamour, a bit of humor and a menacing main villain usually associated with Bond movies? I love action movies as much as the next `guy’, but I want it woven into a story line not just `thrown’ in for effect.
The characters in this movie are forgettable, with the exception of Giancarlo Giannini’s role, and he was brutally killed off for no reason. I can understand a darker Bond after his recent lost, but unless you saw the Casino Royale, it doesn’t make sense – a flash back to a happier moment would have helped. I don’t know if it was the writing, the directing or the editing, but in my opinion this was disaster! I’m thinking of watching Casino Royale again to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Daniel Craig and Judi Dench are both fine actors and deserved a better vehicle then this movie.
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More action, less story
Quantum of Solace is a very good follow-up to Casino Royale. Daniel Craig still plays a cold 007 still recovering from the death of Vesper Lynd in the previous film.
The film begins almost immediately after Casino Royale. Being a direct sequel, the film doesn’t go back and recap previous events all that much, so I highly recommend seeing Casino Royale first. After the opening scene, the credit sequence is cool looking but I’m sorry to say the theme song is pretty tuneless and forgettable.
I won’t go into detail, but the storyline is compelling as a continuation of the last movie. However, it is cut between chase scenes. They are good chase scenes and I don’t mind action (it is part of the James Bond experience, after all), but there are a few too many in Quantum. They have everything: car chases, boat chases, plane chases, you name it! I just feel that much of the story was sacrificed for the sake of the action.
Olga Kurylenko is a very beautiful Bond Girl. She plays a very important role in the film. I admire that Quantum of Solace made little references to other Bond films like Goldfinger. The film answers many questions left after Casino Royale, but creates more yet to be answered. But the movie still has me hooked.
Despite its flaws, Quantum of Solace is a great James Bond movie!
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The Bond Is Back In Town…
Coming right off of Casino Royale [Blu-ray], Quantum of Solace draws from the more modern era of spy films such as The Bourne Trilogy (The Bourne Identity | The Bourne Supremacy | The Bourne Ultimatum) [Blu-ray], by going for tightly shot, tightly plotted and low gadget stories.
The second film with Daniel Craig, his Bond may be the closest to the one created by Sir Ian Flemming, with his not-quite-conventionally lovely face and brutal brawler aspect to him. We see the evolution of Bond from man driven towards brutal revenge to a man driven to total revenge by crawling up the ladder of enemies. Also, the new overarching plot of the new Bond-the existence, nature, and goals of the mysterious group called Quantum-is elaborated here.
A superbly done film, and superbly shot. It has the Bond trademark of going to unique places, and is as much travelogue as action film.
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amazing
daniel craig play’s a man in pain over the love of his life.dealing with her betray and what could have been if she lived.wanting to find the men who blackmail her and cause her death in the end.the only way to get this movie is to watch casino royale.daniel craig prove to all who didn’t believe he could handle being james bond mouth is forever shut.
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The Daniel Craig Bond is something new.
It’s hard to talk about the Daniel Craig Bond, and particularly this movie, without using the word “gritty.” So, there you go. Last summer, I read all the Bond novels in order. Daniel Craig’s portrayal of Bond is more like the Ian Fleming vision than any of the previous actors’, including, even, Sean Connery. This is easily the most sober of the Bond films. Lots of exciting action, only over-the-top in the same way as are the action scenes, in say, the Bourne movies. (And the fight scenes seem clearly to owe much to the Bourne films.)
That said, to be successful, Craig is going to have to tweak it a bit. We can enjoy a more serious and realistic Bond, as an offset to the serial nonsense which are the Roger Moore films. But he can’t be a total downer indefinitely. We’re going to want to like the guy at some point and we’re going to need at least a little of that Bond humor.
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From magnificience to malaise in just two years
Quantum of Solace, compared to Casino Royale – that stupendous franchise reboot in 2006 – is a huge disappointment. What’s more, it’s underwhelming. James Bond should never be underwhelming.
Unlike most, I thought this entry was pretty decent. Although it needed to slice out three-fourths of the action, replace it with plot and bump up the running time to about two hours, I wasn’t pissed off at the end result. To quote Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, “Suppose that’s something.”
There’s been much criticism about the controversial “shaky cam” cinematographic technique. The action sequences are indeed ineptly shot but they’re not too hard to follow. The problem is there’s so many of them that it becomes ridiculous. Apparently Michael G. Wilson/Barbara Broccoli/Marc Forster felt that five full minutes of dialogue might bore the audience so it would need to be punctuated by car chases, rooftop flights, fisticuffs, speed boating, DC-3 dogfights and a shootout intercut with Tosca.
Peter Lamont, production designer since 1981’s For Your Eyes Only (absent just from 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies) and Daniel Kleinman, main titles designer since 1995’s Goldeneye have been replaced by two far less talented individuals. The picture looks cheap in places (despite being the most expensive installment of all) and the faux-retro opening credits are terrible.
At first I derided the Jack White/Alicia Keys theme ‘Another Way To Die’ as excruciating but eventually discovered it improves with enough listens. This is far from the nadir of 1974’s ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’.
Prickly, blistering guitars suffuse a delirious soundscape of bleating horns and skittish piano chords. White/Keys’ aural cacophony and inane lyrics may pale in comparison to Chris Cornell’s red-blooded dazzler ‘You Know My Name’ but their song remains a mild success.
Paul Haggis/Neal Purvis/Robert Wade handed in their collaborative script juuuuuust before the writer’s strike deadline and it shows (why no one felt compelled to tinker with it after the strike is beyond me). The plot is insignificant (stealing Bolivia’s water supply – ZOMG!) and the roles are underwritten. Sadly, this even includes Daniel Craig’s.
Olga Kurylenko (Camille) and Gemma Arterton (“Strawberry” Fields, whose ultimate fate is a strange homage to 1964’s Goldfinger) are two of 007’s least memorable ingenues. In fact, I’d go so far as to call Judi Dench (M) the film’s true Bond girl. Mathieu Amalric (playing Dominic Greene with bug-eyed sleaze) is such a great foil that his character especially would have benefited from being fleshed out.
Unfortunately, Greene’s lair – Perla De Las Lunas – is perhaps the dumbest of the series. This is a giant, vacant hotel (or as I like to call it, the Hindenburg on land) nonsensically located in the middle of the desert. What’s more, it’s powered by hydrogen fuel cells instead of solar energy. Naturally, the entire cardboard set blows sky high within seconds of Bond’s arrival. It makes even less sense than that laughable giant cargo jet in 2002’s Die Another Day.
To its credit, Quantum of Solace moves along at a relatively brisk pace, David Arnold once again turns in a haunting score (which inexplicably doesn’t use the Bond theme) and Daniel Craig is still excellent as the world’s greatest spy. If only he’d been given better material to work with this time around.
Those looking for cinematic proficiency can take solace in the heartrending death scene of an amiable protagonist; its counterpoint is the limp d*ck resolution of the Vesper subplot.
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One off the assembly line…
Quantum of Solace is a frustrating Bond film, which switches between very entertaining to fairly pedestrian at frightening speed. At best, it may be described as uneven. Coming off the backs of one of the best Bond films ever and a wonderful piece of cinema in its own right, namely Casino Royale, the producers and director of QoS make a strange choice to halt the revolution early and instead, produce a fairly standard, sometimes even pedestrian outing for Bond. In that sense, QoS has none of the revolutionary flair, the deft characterization, and the bold styling of its predecessor. And don’t let anyone tell you it’s being judged harshly because it’s being compared to Casino Royale either. Put simply, the film never elevates itself above the level of standard blockbuster actioner. It’s major failure is that it doesn’t continue the path toward reinvention that the previous installment did, and rather falls back on some well worn cliché’s, which is surprising, considering that Marc Forster is the last director I would expect “the usual” from.
Nearly everything in QoS grates where you crave escape. From it’s truncated opening, supposedly taking place one hour after Casino ends, to the horrible song played over the credit sequence, to the maddeningly slim running time, the movie announces itself as almost intended to dissatisfy. In the pre-credits sequence, there’s a visceral but much too short car chase somewhat hampered by the hyper-stylized editing, popular with directors who lack confidence. (Although it’s implied this happens fairly shortly after the end of CR, Bond is apparently wearing a different suit to the one we see him in at the end of that film.)
Bond himself is a bit of a wreck in the movie. The loss he suffers previously is taking a toll on him. He’s drinking more heavily and prone to do more serious damage than his superiors might like. He’s angry and upset and self-destructive and, because of Daniel Craig’s excellent performance, somewhat sympathetic at times. But these little touches get lost in the “by-the-numbers” feel of the action sequences, all of which happen too quickly and trail off at the end rather than build to a satisfying climax. It’s as if the producers, writers and director together, sat down before the film was written, counted out how many set pieces they intended the film to have, story-boarded and location-scouted them, and then sat down to write the movie. The film is also mean – Bond’s treatment of Mathis is shocking and doesn’t have the effect the filmmakers may have thought it would. In fact it undermines all their earlier efforts to make Bond sympathetic. The most irritating aspect of the film is the heavy reliance on that annoying and much overused plot-point involving Bond going rogue/losing his licence/being sanctioned by superiors/called back by MI6 or whatever. It’s tired and re-tread here to very annoying effect.
By far the movie’s biggest weaknesses are the fairly weak plot at it’s center, the unfortunately weaker villain involved, and the generally weak third act. The confrontation in the desert is especially deserving of derision as it is so typically summer blockbuster fair/cliché’ that it is unforgivable. Third acts of Bond films are usually their Achilles heal, but you can usually tell the bad ones easy – they involve everything blowing up for no discernable reason.
For all this criticism though, QoS should be watched. It’s a Bond film, Daniel Craig makes another superb turn, all the other performances are fantastic and there are parts of it that are genuinely thrilling, even if you’ve seen most of it before. And it’s not that the film is very bad, though it is flawed. It’s just that the movie’s only “ok,” and nothing more.
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SPUTUM OF NONSENSE
This is the WORST Bond ever! Far below “Moonraker”, “View to a Kill”, “Die Another Day”, or any other all time low! Shame, shame, and, hopefully, a panic red alert for EON Productions, especially after the franchise’s brilliant makeover with “Casino Royale”.
Ten basic aberrations:
1.- Pretentious and incoherent title. The plot lives up to it, unfortunately.
2.- No gun barrel opening. Why put it at the end?
3.- Horrible song. It’s like a tradition now, ever since Tina Turner sang the powerful “Goldeneye” theme. No fireworks afterwards.
4.- Uninteresting girl. A tanned, pouting, undernourished model so limp, Bond doesn’t even kiss her, let alone bed her! The bit about her belonging to the “Bolivian Secret Service” makes for the only (unintentional) joke in the movie.
5.- Feeble villains: one is the same French runt who played Pappa’s boy in Spielberg’s own spy fiasco ‘Munich’. The other is just an ugly Hispanic thug in uniform.
6.- Giancarlo Giannini and Jeffrey Wright. Neither made much of an impression in ‘Casino Royale’. Why bring them back? Giannini’s corny death scene makes the entire audience squirm with embarassment.
7.- Horrible locations (except for Siena). Chile and Panama stand for Bolivia and Haiti. I’ve been in those four countries, and I can tell you there are plenty of plush resorts and beautiful places in each and every one of them. Why just show their ugly slums? India looked lovely in “Octopussy”, Thailand looked fabulous in “Man with the Golden Gun”. Why make the exception with Latin America? What’s so exotic about a dump? Who’d want to go there? As for picturesque alpine Austria, all we get is an arty-fartsy opera staged in a scaffold, intercut with some rapid slam-bang-dung. Which take us to number…
8.- Convoluted editing. The whole movie looks more like a music clip than a Bond movie. After a while it gets not only tiresome but annoying. At that point all you want is to see the end credits. Even if there is no gun barrel sequence.
9.- CGIs. Hate them! EON should avoid them altogether. People expect to see real feats of derring do, made by the world’s top stuntmen risking their very lives before the camera. At least in a Bond movie they do. That’s an essential part of their appeal. Skip on that and they become standard action flicks. Finally…
10.- Hollywood’s new PC crapola, paying lip service to Marxists despots like Castro, Aristide, Chávez and Evo, against evil multinational corporations (which conveniently remain nameless or fictional). Has Bond turned out to be Kim Philby? Say it isn’t so, James!
Last but not least, a
P.S.: Why would anyone build a huge minimalist hotel with no swiming pool in the middle of a mountain desert? Why would it blow up in flames all of a sudden, like an oil refinery? No idea. That’s what they call them “Mistery Movies”, I guess…
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Just for the record: Bolivia is a South American country facing many problems. Lack of water isn’t one of them. Half the population lives near the immense Lake Titicaca, amid the ever snowed Andes, while the other resides on the banks of the Amazon River. Bolivian deserts are so due to their high altitude, just like those in Tibet. Wherever the Bolivian terrain slopes down, it becomes the Amazon jungle. If Hollywood writers are so concerned with the plight of the poor nations on Earth, it would be wise to learn a little about them before posing out as their champions.
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