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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Quark of Blah
Much inferior to its predecessor, “Casino Royale.” What happened? Some interesting setup, and then we learn it’s All About Water, that American spies don’t bat an eyelash about sanctioning the murder of a British spy for reasons of allegedly exigent foreign policy, and other such nonsense. Some interesting bits and shots, and Craig is a better Bond than most who have played him, but there’s no there there. After having seen it in the theater, I was too bored to watch it all again on the DVD. Disappointing, especially since “Casino Royale” was a much-needed and riveting re-boot of the series.
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Excellent Continuation To Casino Royale
This feature in the series of the extraordinary creation by Ian Fleming is nothing less than a great advancement in cementing the future in both the hearts and culture of this next generation. As the official review in Amazon states, this movie is great continuation of Casino Royale. It is foolish to attempt to understand and appreciate Quantum of Solace without placing it in the proper context of the Bond series.
Quantum of Solace allows the viewer to develop an intimate relationship with the character, building on past experiences from Monte Carlo, and preparing the viewer for the true unveiling of James Bond when his character fully matures. These two initial chapters in the Daniel Craig epoch have been a delightful introduction into what is becoming the 21st century standard for Bond.
FIVE STARS
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Sigh… They’re doing it again.
Let me begin by saying this is a decent film. It’s not BAD, but it’s not nearly all it could have been either, and the reason for that is that the makers of the film are falling into the same trap that killed Brosnan’s last Bond outing “Die Another Day.” — too $@&% much emphasis on very elaborate and very flashy stunts and effects sequences and not enough on the plot and the story.
“Casino Royale” was a great film not because it featured the coolest effects and biggest explosions, but because it told a riveting story. That’s also why the first several Connery Bond films were great. It’s distressing to see that after hitting a home run with Craig’s first turn as Bond, by getting back to good storytelling, they couldn’t see that THAT was why the film worked so well and stick to that approach. They make it look like they are lost as soon as they don’t have Fleming’s actual story to work from.
At least they left out the science fiction gadgets, but they did give way too much screen time to the elaborate stunt sequences. If they’d put half as much effort into plotting and story writing it would have been a far better film.
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I Bonded with this Movie
First off, let me say that with time, and changes in tastes, the Bond movies I liked when I was younger are almost unwatchable. Even one of the highest grossing Bond films, Die Another Day, wasn’t that good. The reason: Everything I used to like about Bond when I was a teenager/young adult. The gadgets (invisible car, laser watches, “Q”, space stations), the sexual ennuendos. Listening to the lounge lizard routine now makes even Pierce Brosnan seem lame. In short, I never really liked Bond movies as they always seemed a bit cheesy. I guess it’s kinda like 80′s glam rock. It might’ve been cool then, but this is a different world with higher expectations.
Now, with Casino Royale and QoS, we have a believable Bond. One that is not perfect. One that has more than one “look”, who never has all the answers. I realize that this takes away what makes Bond Bond, but that’s where the problem is. There is a group of people who liked the old Bond movies, even those with Sean Connery and those that thought they were lame characters in unbeleiveably stupid situations. Seriously, how many individuals think that, without an army, they can take over and maintain rule over the entire world? Or better yet, try and milk countries for money? How about killing off the main character with a hat or a laser?
With QoS, we have a subtle Bond, one still conflicted over what happened to his love interest from the last movie ( a first, I believe for Bond movies). I thought the story was very engaging. A movie where the tech takes a backseat to plot. It is a more complex plot than what you may be used to, but that’s a good thing. The opening car scene, the knife/scissor fight in the hotel, to name a few, and especially, the scene where he is facing the possibility that he will have to do the unthinable to avoid a horrible fate (hint: not this way). I still get chills.
I believe the director is trying to flesh out Bond so that the incarnations we’re used to seeing are explained. The fact that he didn’t always make it when he was jumping from structure to structure is a basic example. And this is the first time he slept with a woman, not to pump her for information, but just because he wanted to.
I honestly liked the character development mixed in with my action scenes. It may not be perfect, but I think the director and the Brocoli family are trying to do it right for once. Give us motivation behind actions as well as some cool action scenes. From what I rememeber, this had more fast paced action than CS. I’m waiting for Bond 23 and looking forward to James moving on, focusing on his career and perfecting his free running skills.
To the reader, this movie is a polarizer, you’ll either like the direction it’s taking or you won’t. Either way, you should watch the movie.
By the way, my home theater is only a year old. I had no problems with the sound field or picture.
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Where’s the dialogue? It felt like maybe 10 minutes worth of talking
They cut out too many scenes to explain wtf was going on. they just cut and jump. Then, somehow bond becomes superman and breaks off a steel door handle. COME ON. The director was horrible, bad angles, etc.
Casino Royale was amazing. This was just stuff blowing up with ZERO story.
It got better later into the movie, that’s the only reason why I give it 3 stars. I still like Daniel Craig as Bond – but I think the writer was horrible (the script is probably 20 pages long) and the director sucked – making the movie okay, at best.
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NEW BOND NOT LIKE THE LAST
The James Bond series has seen its ups and downs. While it has always been a money maker, it seemed like it was about to lose steam during the last of the Pierce Brosnan set. And then they decided on a new Bond, one that most fans weren’t sure about. Think back to the surprise when Daniel Craig not only filled the shoes well but maybe better than Brosnan, the man fans clamored for.
While CASINO ROYALE went on to become a huge hit, fans wondered whether or not the follow up would be. Well QUANTUM OF SOLACE is as good as its predecessor…and its not. It is definitely not the same film. But it still ranks as a dynamite action flick.
The film takes place shortly after the end of the last one. Bond is literally on the road in the midst of a car chase among the hills of Italy with its winding highway along the edge of mountains on one side, cliffs dropping to the sea on the other. Between gunplay and tight squeezes he escapes the bad guys and brings a lead to the Quantum crime organization to M (Judi Dench) to be questioned.
Too bad the captive lets them know they’ve been infiltrated and M’s right hand man is one of them as her guard attempts to assassinate M and kills his man in the process. A fleet footed pursuit follows as Bond takes after the man with a rooftop battle that ends in a platform fist fight and the death of the traitor.
With few leads to follow, Bond hits the road and discovers a young woman named Camille (Olga Kurylenko) he helps escape from death at the hands of her benefactor and Quantum agent Dominic Greene (Matthieu Almaric). Greene’s front is that of a philanthropic eco-warrior with intentions of saving the world. In reality, his plans involve nothing more than taking advantage of those who want to save the world as well as their money.
Bond’s lead seems thin and as he ignores M’s pleas to come in and debrief, he finds himself alone without the aid of the British Secret Service. Instead he relies on the help of an old friend he once put in prison, Rene Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini). The pair flies off to South America where they confront Greene.
More leads, a few deaths and an accidental discovery of what Greene is truly attempting to do lead Bond to a secluded building in the dessert of Bolivia, a drought filled country in need of water where it seems Greene may have found oil. Enough so that the Americans in the form of the C.I.A. are ready to jump into bed with him and support the coupe he intends to sponsor.
Only Bond can put a stop to the whole thing and with few people backing him one has to question if he can accomplish this feat. He…okay…come on. This is James Bond we’re talking about here. Of course he wins!
One major difference here is Bond’s motivation. He’s not just following orders here, indeed he’s ignoring orders and going off on his own. What first seems like an act of vengeance for the death of Vesper from CASIONO, it seems that he’s truly attempting to bring down Quantum single handedly as well as take out those who would attack M, his personal authority figure.
The film is a genuine action film that holds your interests and also offers enough story to make you think as well. But it isn’t CASINO ROYALE or any other Bond film. It’s harder, edgier and Bond comes off less flippant and more determined. One thing that helps explain this is to discover that this film isn’t meant to stand on its own. It’s more of a direct follow up to ROYALE. The two films are meant to be seen together and when done that way make a much better viewing pleasure.
So the best thing to do is take a Saturday or Sunday, make plenty of popcorn, fill the ice bucket and break out the 2 liter bottle and get ready. This is gonna be a long viewing experience but well worth it. And when it’s over, you’ll be sitting, wondering and waiting for the next Craig played Bond feature to be released.
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The last part of “Casino Royale”, which must be watched first to fully understand-Craig is an excellent 007-Love it!
But I like every Bond film and own them all. I don’t regard them all equally but I do like them all.
“Quantum of Solace” is the last third of a story that started with “Casino Royale”. It is shorter than most Bond films but still has an impact, maybe more of one.
I particulary enjoy the exchanges between M (Judi Dench) and Bond. Dench is an sensational M, and she is quite believable. I like the song “You Know My Name” By Chris Cornell better than “Another Way To Die” but “Another Way To Die” is a good theme. Anything but Madonna’s “Die Another Day”, the WORST Bond song. (I.M.H.O.)
I pre-ordered from Amazon and it showed up the day before it was released, Monday. I really appreciate that because I did not see the film in the theater and was very eager to watch it. Thanks Amazon!
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Not as good as Casino Royale, but the series is moving in the right direction
Quantum Solace is an above average action flick, but it is not on par with Casino Royale or the Bourne movies. I think that the film relies too much on spectacle and setting rather than character and plot. At its best, the film shows why Daniel Craig is such a perfect choice for a hardnosed Bond. With all respect to Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan, none of them looks like he can take a kick in the ribs, much less dish one out. The film’s two best moments are the fight in the Haitian hotel–which is fast and brutal, not staged and spectacular–and the 30 seconds when Craig is topless and we see the scars and bruises on his body. No previous Bond as ever made being battered look good. The rest of the film is globetrotting and lavish action pieces that never sizzle the way the Haitian hotel fight sizzles. Perhaps it is artistic to intercut a chase with an Italian horse race and a gunfight with an Austrian opera, but it is not compelling and does not fit with this new, tougher Bond. I also think that the film misses an opportunity to reveal more character. When M tells Bond that his seductive charm has been lethal to several undeserving people, we never see his full emotional response. I wanted to see him struggle with that insight.
Overall, the Bond series is proceeding in the right direction. In my opinion, Craig is the best Bond of them all. I also like how the films spotlight the relationship between M and Bond. So far, M has mostly reined in Bond; in the next film, I would like to see her unleash him. Maybe she’s nearly killed or she loses her position, and she tells Bond to make her assailants pay. Imagine the carnage.
I think that the new Bond movies have a chance to be more than the campy action movies that starred Moore, Dalton, and Brosnan. They have the right actors and the right ideas. Look at The Dark Knight: If a comic book movie can aspire to film art, so can a Bond movie. I would like to see Craig win an Academy Award for Bond.
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Bond is NOT Superman!
Yes, Bond is not Superman or Spiderman or Batman. He is a secret agent,a human being, so when I see him making totally impossible leaps just shy of leaping tall buildings in a single bound I know that the makers of this latest film are wrongly thinking more is more instead of realizing that less is more. In the opening foot chase sequence of “Casino Royale” there was a fast, furious, high leaping foot chase – yet it was much more believable than the similar sequence in “Quantum.” I remember the train compartment fight between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in “From Russia With Love” – and that battle in a contained space was a hundred times more exciting than all the over-the-top action in this current Bond outing.
Having said that, Daniel Craig is a superb Bond. “Casino Royale” knew how to balance its relatively more believable action sequences with quieter moments of character building. In “Quantum” we have just too, too much action (most of it totally unbelievable and more suited for a superhero movie), often inaudible dialog, editing speed that makes much of what is going on or even being said too fast-paced and a plot that is totally impossible to follow unless you have seen “Casino.” The villain’s motivations are quite absurd also, once we finally figure them out.
The movie is still a worth-see because of those too-seldom subtler scenes where we see Craig’s Bond more as a human being than as when he is playing Superman. I hope the next Bond film is toned down a couple notches – and that the producers and director realize that action isn’t everything, especially when it is insulting to the intelligence because NO one could survive most of the stuff that happens in this installment.
Still worthwhile, even for Craig and Judi Dench alone.
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Making Bond boring; No feel for action or the formula
Background: For me, Daniel Craig may be the best Bond: He brings an intensity and physicality to the role that is a better fit to the character.
All of the action sequences were not just disappointing, but boring. The opening car chase didn’t have any elements that hadn’t appeared countless times before. And the frenetic cutting created emotional detachment. Similarly for the foot chase (Casino Royale’s was infinitely superior). The airplane chase is so much less than what appeared in earlier Bond movies. For sophistication and elements, I would place it in the 1970s (closer to the 1973 TV movie Birds of Prey than Top Gun in 1986).
The exploding building insulted the audience’s intelligence: No one would build a hotel where a small fire would be able to cascade to engulf the whole building within minutes. It appeared that the fuel was hydrogen (which has a very characteristic flame), but what was portrayed was the generic exploding building that you have seen in so so many movies. The only unique aspect was the architecture, which counts for nothing.
No plot: not enough plot points for this movie to qualify.
No villain: Greene is just banal, but not “the banality of evil”.
Cardboard characters: Casino Royale showed a more complex Bond. The script provides little opportunity for Daniel Craig to repeat, much less expand on that. The substitute is a bad guy telling Bond “You are both damaged goods”.
And M repeatedly condemns Bond without even asking what happened. Although she has a right to be frustrated with him, that is part of the “deal” she accepted for his capabilities, and is represented at the end of the movie after a completely unmotivated change.
The killing of Strawberry Fields is the most telling instance of lack of understanding of the formula: The woman to be killed by the villain is a close associate of his–often a mistress–who has been seduced by Bond into betraying him. Fields role was too innocuous to warrant a targeted sadistic killing (she was a MI-6/SIS clerical support person sent to be a minder for Bond).
Why 1 star? For a random film, being annoyed, but not offended, by having my time wasted rates 2 stars, but I expect a higher standard from this franchise.
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No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to make sense!
By the time we got to the inexplicable exploding luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere, this movie had completely lost me. Take a closer look at the artwork on the cover of this DVD and you’ll see what I’m talking about. It pictures James Bond walking off into a vast wasteland while this ridiculous prop burns in the background. What a perfect metephor for this turkey.
Has it come to this? Does Mr. Big’s big plan for global domination really involve jacking up the price for water in Bolivia? I was waiting for him to stick his little finger in his mouth and demand “One Million Pesos!”
Bomb, James Bomb.
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I’ll be watching this for a long time
This meets all the criteria of a masterful adventure but it also has a conscience without rubbing it in our faces. About a year ago I read where Matt Damon liked his character from the Bourne series because he was not Bond.
I agreed with that assessment.
But with the newer attempt to make James Bond a contemporary MI6 player we’re seeing something that has been avoided in the past and that is a human machine with a heart. He may not wear it on his sleeve but actions do speak louder than words. He’s not a cold agent of vengeance (even as he sometimes looks and acts like one) but a man trying to make a difference as well as hold his own agency’s feet to the fire. In his defiance Bond risks exposing the sad state of today’s political realities but also acts to retain or recover some ideal worth defending. Like Jason Bourne he knows he’s been someone’s patsy but decides to spin that into a benefit.
The bottom line; James Bond is trying to protect not only England, but the free world, from the greedy, jaded players and puppeteers who think the world and its people are up for grabs. In that, he’s finally doing his job.
Would Ian Flemming be proud? I can only hope he would be.
I’m sorry for the lacking specificity to any actions and scenes. Suffice it to say, I want you to see it with a clear head and open eyes.
One bit of advice: leave your nostalgia at the door.
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This Bond movie is good, but…
I’ve been around since Doctor No was released, and had read all the books before that. I appreciate getting away from all the gadgets, and Daniel Craig is an excellent Bond. But I find myself imagining Christian Bale as Bond. Of course, he’d probably only do one movie as the character, but what a Bond he would be.
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the hell?
after seeing Casino Royale, i assumed that whoever was in charge of the James Bond franchise was doing everything they could to make it fantastic. then i saw Craig’s sequel… what a motherloving let down! Quantum of Solace, the best thing about it was its title.
in short, Casino Royale might be the best Bond movie ever. Quantum is one of the worst i’ve seen. oh, how the mighty have fallen. the third Craig Bond film will make or break the franchise, i believe. and a tip for the writer, allow James to have sex with a woman who actually survives!
D
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Quality of [...]
To me, Quantum of Solace was a complete and utter letdown ! I saw and liked its direct predecessor Casino Royale, so my expectations were high. But I found some parts of QoS to be almost unwatchable. Did the editor go mad or was he doped up when he cut this movie? The action sequences comprise of extremely short, blurry images that pass with machinegun-speed. They produce an almost stroboscopic effect that literally hurts your eyes and numbs your mind and leaves you unsure of what’s happened. At home, you can rewind the DVD player to watch it again. In the movie theater, you’re hopefully lost. The result is a physically exhausting film experience after a mere five minutes of play. I almost switched the DVD-player off there and then. I know that the pace of (action) movies has picked up considerably since the nineties, and in general that is a good thing. But the pace of the action sequences of QoS is ridiculous and an insult to moviegoers. My young adult children (18 and 16) complained about this too, so thankfully I am not alone in this respect. Just lately, I began to fear that I have trouble coping with the increasing pace of today’s movies because I have turned middle-age. Clearly this is not the case, then ! The action and violence in QoS is gritty and realistic, almost clinical. And I love Daniel Craig as the new JB. Five stars for him. But QoS the movie seems to have no discernible plot and what little plot there is is enigmatic (not in the positive sense), vague, illogical and lacks coherence. This quickly becomes annoying to the extreme. You never have an idea what’s going to happen next and –most important–why. I am very happy with “the new JB” as portrayed by Daniel Craig, but QoS is definitely not the way forward with the JB-franchise.
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