Continuing as a direct sequel to Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace opens with a car chase that can be used to summarize the entire film: It’s loud, fast-paced, and somewhat confusing, but, ultimately, you figure out what’s happened and make sense of it all.
This time out, James Bond (Daniel Craig) and MI6 are trying to fully understand the events that transpired in Casino Royale. When an MI6 agent goes rogue and attempts to kill M (Judi Dench), Bond finds himself looking for revenge. He ends up on the trail of Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), who runs an ecologically-minded company called Greene Planet, who is interested in a seemingly worthless piece of desert real estate in Bolivia. Bond follows a trail of clues to Haiti, where he meets Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who provides inside information on Greene and who has a few scores of her own to settle.
While the story-line is initially convoluted, director Marc Forster, who takes the reins from Martin Campbell, does his best to confuse things even further by shooting some of the most chaotic and hard-to-follow action scenes ever seen in a Bond film. For example, a chase scene that takes place in the tunnels below Siena, Italy was so haphazardly edited that I had no idea which character I was viewing most of the time. It wasn’t until the scene moved to the rooftops that I knew who was who. Unfortunately, there are many action sequences in Quantum of Solace and most of them are filmed in this manner.
One of the qualities I liked about Casino Royale‘s reinvention of Bond for the 21st Century was that the action scenes seemed free of any noticeable CGI trickery. This time out, perhaps to appease those who missed the over-the-top quality of previous Bond movies, the action sequences are more akin to those older films. Most notably, a high speed boat chase and an explosive confrontation at a desert hotel. Still, there is nothing in the film that is completely unbelievable. Even with the problems I had with their composition, the action scenes provide a nice balance between the old and the new.
Daniel Craig, who returns for his second outing as James Bond, has very few lines of dialogue. Apparently meant to emphasize how driven Bond is to deal out revenge, this means Bond comes across as even more frosty than he was in Casino Royale. Still, Craig is an excellent Bond. Because the rest of the film is not up to the standards set in Casino Royale, it is Craig’s performance that carries the franchise this time out.
It might sound as if I didn’t like the majority of Quantum of Solace, but that’s not true. Along with Craig’s performance, I enjoyed Olga Kurylenko’s Camille and her story-line. She’s not quite as interesting as Casino Royale‘s Vesper Lynd but it’s nice to see another strong female character in a Bond film. I also enjoyed the actual plot once I made sense of it. Despite some inherent problems with the script, I liked that the story worked in elements of current real world problems.
Had the action sequences been more coherent and the script more straightforward, Quantum of Solace could have been as good as Casino Royale. As it is, it’s an adequately entertaining entry in a series that’s had its share of ups and downs. Let’s hope that 2010’s entry — as yet unnamed — is directed by someone who knows how to film a fight scene.
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
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