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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.