Quantum of Solace Reviews

Ticks all the right boxes, but not as good as Casino Royale

This is a good Bond film, better than all Brosnan's film hands down, although Quantum of Solace isn't as polished as Casino Royale. The villians and the bond girls aren't as memorable as in Royale, but Craig and Dench are on top form, with Dench being given a welcome extented role. The action scenes although good, are just a carbon copy of the latest Bourne film, which is a shame as Bond doesn't need to copy the Bourne films, as he has his legacy to look up to.

Don't expect any invisable cars, cheesy one-liners or any raised eye brows, as this Bond is more like the Terminator rather than a posh, martini drinking spy. That said, the story is really good and continues Bonds investigation of the dark organisation that killed Vesper. And know doubt, Bonds investigation into this organisation will play an important role in the next film which I look forward in seeing. I hope they get a Chris Nolan (The Dark Knight) to direct the next one, as I think he'll introduce some new intersting concepts to the Bond franchise. Overall solid entertainment.

Oh Oh Dear.....

I have just returned from the midnight screening and I have to say I thouroughlly enjoyed the film. However, I don't know what I enjoyed. Confused, well I still am.

There was lots of action in lots of badly interwoven scenes, in fact it was like an epsiode of Police Camera Action.

In fact this movie could have been a 20 minute conclusion added to the end of Casino Royale as all it did was provide a 2 hour revenge movie for Bond.

I believe it all went wrong with the abismal theme tune.

* * * This review contains spoilers * * *ShowHide

NOBODY DOES IT BETTER!

Two years ago we were treated to one of the best Bond adventures ever, and also what could be the best Bond ever in the rough and ready form of Daniel Craig. Casino Royale was the ultimate reboot of the much loved series, that brought back the hard edge, that had seemed to have slipped in the last outing for Brosnan.

The endining to Casino Royale was Iconic as Bond introduces him self to Mr White, then the Iconic theme tune and the credits rolled, leaving fans new and old gagging for the next episode.

So now it's here, but does Quantum Of Solace live up to Casino Royale?

Quantum Of Solace is the only Bond film to be a direct sequel, and picks up where Royale ended. But this is a different film, it a raw story of revenge , as Bond goes renegade and sets out on a track of reveng to find out who is behind the funding of the terrorist activities, and caused his lover Vesper to protect and end up taking her own life in doing so. The film is action pact, and even more brital, as Bond becomes as lethal as Jason Bourne. With out no tacky one liners and very few gadgets to get in the way, this is the meanest Bond ever, and all the better for it. The film may lack the sheen of Royale, but as this is a revnge story the gritty feel is an advantage, also the running time of Solace is the shortest of the series at only 106 minutes compared to Royales 144 minutes. So Solace runs at a break neck pace.

If you have not seen Casino Royale, then you will be lost with this film, so if you plan on seeing this over the next few weeks, make sure you recap on Daniel Craigs last superb outing.

Although a direct sequel to Royale, Solace is a different film, and lacks the compliccated plot the first had, but as a raw and ready action film, this film out does any in the series, and is without a doubt the best action adventure of the year, and one of the best Bond films ever.

This truly is a must see, and only confirms that Daniel Craig as Bond Nobody does it better!

* * * This review contains spoilers * * *ShowHide

A Huge Disappointment

I have just returned from a screening of Quantum of Solace and am struck by how it left me completely cold. Bored is one thing I never thought I could feel in a Bond film. Casino Royale was a brilliant addition to the Bond canon - it had the vintage feel of a classic Bond film, a newly-defined Bond with a Flemingesque ruthlessness and gimlet eyes, a very fine villian in Mads Mikkelson, and a great script written with the aid of the award-winning screenwriter to Crash.

The screenwriters to Quantum seem to have done an aboutface. We are left with the Brosnan antics of Die Another Day - preposterous stunts, back-to-back action with little development of plot or character, little time for any chemistry between Bond and the female lead, a denouement in a villain's lair in the desert with all the ludicrousness of a Roger Moore instalment. And that makes sense, because the screenwriters for this film are the same ones as worked on the Brosnan franchise.

Something didn't square at all, and I think a large factor is the script. We don't need camp humour or biting one-liners, but we do need dialogue. The showdown between Bond and Dominic Greene required some kind of conflict, after all right from the beginning of Casino we have been led towards this climax between these two men, and yet Marc Foster had given is nothing in the screenplay to suggest that these two men had a developed hatred of one another.

Mathieu Almaric cuts a puny villain, and his henchmen are all puny henchmen. Gone is Grant or Oddjob or Rosa Klebb or Nick-Nack or Tee-Hee. Greene's henchman, who is called Elvis in the credits, but is never referred to by name in the film, wears a toupee and is weedy and ineffectual. There is no drama at all between him and Greene. You can't fault Almaric as a villain because he has absolutely nothing to work wiith. The demented turn Greene takes with an axe at the film's close is perhaps really Almaric venting his frustration out on the flat character he has been given.

The theme song was appalling. I can't recall a truly evocative Bond song since the days when John Barry composed the score, but this one really was the pits.

It may be that the thirty minutes of commercials (a lot of them playstation combat or apocalyptic games) before the film commenced had already numbed me for Bond, but in any case the action was sheer overkill. Back-to-back Bond in a car, Bond on a rooftop, Bond in a boat, Bond in a plane, and then I finally realized that it could just as well be any action hero as Bond. The camera never allowed you to settle on Craig in action, the viewer is just roughly manhandled from scene to scene, from one rollercoaster to the next. Whole sequences, as others have said, were lifted straight out of the Bourne franchaise - the opening car chase like bumper cars, the naturalistic close combat with a double agent in a Haitian apartment, the epilogue in a snowswept Russia that ties up all the loose ends (the epilogue to The Bourne Supremacy anyone? also set in a snowswept Russia, tying up loose plot-threads).

Finally, the dastardly plot. Just what is it? Greene is hoarding vast reserves of water in the Bolivian desert to do what? Sell it for extortionate prices to Bolivian farmers? I may be wrong, but Bolivia last time I checked was a small South American nation with a negligible GNP and a people who had suffered under one lousy regime after another. If Greene really wanted a plot for global domination, he should monopolize the oil industry and hoard it so that consumers all over the world have to pay extortionate prices at the pump. Now we all know that is a plot that can work.

All this is a crushing pity, because, for my money, Craig could just possibly be the best Bond we've had (and I know this may ring like blasphemy to Conneryphiles). A blunt instrument is what he is, just like Fleming's Bond.

Sorry about the rant, but someone needed to give this film a rundown. Anyway, definitely enough said.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Quantum of Solace

With Casino Royale the Bond series, which had once again sunk into a miasma of smugness and double entendres, rebooted itself into a leaner, meaner, more brutish, and more entertaining animal. It debuted Daniel Craig as the new Bond and brought stunt coordinator Dan Bradley of the Bourne franchise into the fold to work on the action. While Casino Royale upped the action quotient it also brought some more character to the movies, the Bond girl (Eva Green’s seductive Vesper Lynd) was afforded wit, intellect and personality, which made the character scenes between her and Bond some of the film’s best moments.

Given that Quantum of Solace has at its helm Marc Forster, director of The Kite Runner, Stranger Than Fiction and Monsters Ball you might expect it to do even more for the characters than Casino Royale did. You’d be very, very wrong. Though penned by the same trio as the last film; Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade Quantum’s screenplay is an utter mess. First of all it is completely impenetrable if you haven’t (as I, fortunately, had) watched Casino Royale just hours before seeing it but worse is the fact that even if you do have the requisite knowledge of the minutiae of the previous film there’s barely a story here. By the end of Casino Royale Bond was different, Quantum of Solace doesn’t advance him one iota. Indeed the entire film feels pointless, when the credits roll, nothing has changed, nothing has been achieved.

I’ve never been a fan of Daniel Craig’s. I find him blank and boring as an actor, and though he’s effective in Casino Royale as an emotionless killing machine, the relationship between Bond and Vesper never truly convinced, because nothing in Craig’s performance suggested that Bond really cared for her. This is a huge problem for Quantum of Solace, in which what drives Bond is, as M puts it “inconsolable rage”. That almost made me laugh, because not for a second does Craig betray that emotion, or any emotion, in Quantum of Solace. He’s a cipher, a nothing of a character. Craig’s every line reading is dead and monotonous, making for an awesomely dull performance, even by his impressively low standards.

If Craig’s terrible turn creates a gaping hole at the centre of Quantum of Solace it’s far from the film’s only problem. Mathieu Amalric struggles to make an impression, giving an awkward performance in English, and saddled with a spectacularly dull and unthreatening villain with a scheme to match. Bond girls Olga Kuryolenko and Gemma Arterton are both pretty, but both are also powerfully tedious, with none of the wit or charm of Eva Green. Judi Dench turns up and does her standard Judi Dench performance, but as M gets the lion’s share of the (very few) decent lines she turns out to be perhaps the best thing in the film.

As for Marc Forster’s direction, it’s hard to credit him with the film. So much of this film must have been shot by Dan Bradley’s action unit that he could probably lobby for a co-director credit. Forster does put his $200 million budget to work, the scale of the film, particularly in a sequence set at a performance of Tosca, is impressive and the effects (bar some awful digital doubles) are indeed pretty special but the acting, Forster’s main responsibility, is often comically bad (the wooden spoon going to a hilarious non-performance from David Harbour). Bradley, on the other hand, does have a couple of decent sequences to his credit, both short sharp hand-to-hand fights. Elsewhere though the action is marred, as seems to be the fashion these days, by a barrage of fast cutting that renders sequences confusing and boring. The opening car chase is a complete mess; shot entirely in fast cut close up it’s impossible ever to tell what’s going on, or even how many cars are following Bond. Mere minutes after this we get a sequence of free running over Siena’s rooftops in which the geography of the action goes completely out of the window. The other problem with the action is that Bond seems impervious to it. In Casino Royale Bond’s exertions hurt, here he’s a superman shrugging off cuts, fire and explosions as though they were nothing, meaning there's never any excitement because it never feels like Bond is in danger.

The storytelling is utterly hopeless, with whole characters (Kuryolenko’s Camille the worst offender) feeling completely tacked on and a baffling globe trotting story with plot holes you could drive a truck through. The dialogue is roughly 87 percent expositional, meaning that nobody has a personality, they all just walk around explaining the plot to each other before being interrupted every five minutes by another action scene. It’s almost impressive, given the talent and money available that Quantum of Solace managed to be as bad as it is. Almost.

Quantum of Solace (its title, by the way, is meaningless) is 100 minutes of nothing. Yes it’s big and noisy but that’s all just window dressing for this boring bit of ephemera.

Question of Solace!

First off don't believe the hype!

Although this film does follow on from Casino Royal it just isn't in the same class. I say this with a deep sigh as I wanted this to be another great outing for Bond.

In the press releases we are told Daniel Craig did most of his stunts but, you can't tell as the film makers have taken the Borne Identity school of action filming and plonked it in the middle of a Bond film. The cutting is so fast you can't tell what the action is let alone who is fighting, not what I expect of Bond.

The other let down is the plot or rather lack of one. Dame Judi & Daniel were good with what they were given to work with, which wasn't much.

All in all I was very disappointed and I can only hope Mr Bond's next outing isn't during a writers strike...

[Highly rated reviewer]

It's Bond, so watch it, but it's not his best

As someone who thought Casino Royale the best Bond ever, and Daniel Craig a big contributor to the franchise, I was very excited about Quantum of Solace. I enjoyed it, but there is no question it isn't as good as its predecessor.

The opening scene sets the pattern for the movie; it's action-packed, but over-energetically edited and hard to follow. And while it's exciting and set in gorgeous scenery (the Italian riviera) and fast and loud and dynamic, it won't stay with you the way the best Bond beginnings do. Likewise, a lot of other Bond 'cliches' are a bit disappointing. There is no 'Bond, James Bond' moment; no final sex scene; hardly a 'shaken, not stirred'. And the theme tune doesn't work for me.

But the film has enough action to keep you engaged. The plot, never exactly a strongpoint of Bond films, works well enough for me. The US vs UK geopolitics was trite but amusingly topical. The gadgets, tho not wielded by those you expect, got a decent lookin. The girls are gorgeous, of course. And several scenes were wonderfully shot - including a gruesome death in a homage to Goldfinger.

Most importantly, the acting was terrific. Both Craig (Bond himself) and Dench (M) are great, emparting a lot more depth than the franchise's longevity would lead you to expect. In this respect the film maintains its brand lead over the Bourne films. See it to watch Craig play the pure psychopath perfectly - and all in the name of National Duty.

DO YOU EXPECT ME TO TALK? NO MR BOND, I EXPECT YOU TO CHEER UP!

Casino Royale was hailed as the big reboot of the Bond series. Grittier, bit darker, stylish - and infinitely more serious than the previous 007 adventures. However, there were sparkles of humour here and there, at least some of the trademark gadgetery and it was, in my humble opinion, overall very well balanced.

Quantum Of Solace is everybit as stylish and gorgeous looking as you would expect from director Marc Forster, the action unrelenting and superbly shot, the emotional fallout from Casino Royale explored in a way that is authentic and not just added on. Forster gets to flex all the muscles people appreciated in his previous films, alas one thing that is missing is his knack for (even subtle) humour. Daniel Craig is burdened with the weight of the world it seems, and although previous Bonds had to constantly deal with global doom, at least they got to quip about it.

The story continues straight on from Casino Royale, so make sure you have rewatched it before entering the labyrinthine plot of Quantum. James learns from Mr White (yes, the one he got at the end of the last Bond) about an organisation that is all around but as yet unknown to the Secret Services (Phantom anybody?), a criminal group that is linked to what happened to Vesper. Needless to say he goes after them, en route casually upsetting several countries and services, left to his own devices and those of his Bolivian sidekick who is on a revenge trip of her own.

Good performances all around, with Craig and Dame Judi carrying the show, the latter having really grown into her role as female M now, mixing no nonsense attitude with maternal care and the ability to apply face cream while running the secret service.

Now if they all had just lightened up a little bit, this could have been perfect. As it is it's a very good film, alas as a Bond film it is just ok. Bring back the entertainment that we loved! The Bourne Trilogy has been and gone and we do not need a retread of that.

SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED

* LICENCE TO KILL

* CASINO ROYALE

* THE BOURNE IDENTITY

No premium Bond!

So what do you do with possibly the best Bond ever, someone who can actually act? You give him a film with no coherent script, a camera which simply cannot keep still and one action scene after another which could be played by anyone.

The opportunity to use Bond's grief after the death of the woman he loved and who seemed to betray him has been completely wasted.

A disappointing mess.

[Highly rated reviewer]

I wanted so much and got so little.....

Having seen and loved the superb Casino Royale I had high hopes for Quantum continuing on in a similar vein,something clever, stylish and emotionally powerful, three things that Quantum of Solace fails to achieve.

The film is action, almost relentlessly so, but with little plot with which to hold it together you're left with what is essentially one set piece after another after another then the end credits. The villain is poorly defined and lacks any real menace and Olga Kurylenko has motivation similar to bond but doesn't really serve much purpose other than looking nice and being the 'damsel' for Bond to save, considering her two dimensional character she is given far too much screen time.

The film for me was essentially the action from a Bourne film with 90% of the plot taken out then the last 10% spread through the film in an incoherent attempt to tie togehter the impressive set pieces.

Craig is utterly compelling as Bond and is desperately let down by the film........why oh why change the original director.......'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' me thinks.