Damn, was I hyped about this movie! It was without a doubt my most anticipated film of last year. So, when the film started, and we had the spectacular car chase scene (Aston vs Alfa) I had high hopes… especially after the typical bond reaction when opening the boot to find Mr. White tied up and wounded (The film picks up directly after Casino Royale ended). Then, the opening credits started and I heard the new bond song – Mmmm!
The basic plot of the story is Bond tracking down those responsible for Vespa’s death in the previous film. His only lead is Mr. White (whom he now has in his possession) and he intends (with the help of MI6) to extract the information required to find out who she was working with.
I was honestly a little disappointed that Quantum of Solace didn’t live up to the vastly superior Casino Royale. Don’t get me wrong, it was a way above average, highly entertaining action film with awesome stunts, but I didn’t feel the story & characters were as well rounded and polished as Casino Royale. It was a darker side of the Bond franchise, with the premise of revenge fueling an entire script (this just isn’t possible)… and whilst Casino Royale also didn’t have the gadgets and Q… this film almost needed them for a bit of comic relief and grounding every so often. I found even the Bond one liners were too few and far between. (I mean how awesome was Connery’s 1964 dead-pan response to Honor Blackman when she said ‘My name is Pussy Galore’. He replied, with a grin on his face, ‘I must be dreaming!’)
Daniel Craig was the best thing in this film and his “Bond” persona from Casino Royale was absolutely spot on again – in fact in my opinion he was better – but one man/one character cannot carry an entire film. There was a bit of help from the always brilliant Judy Dench and Giancarlo Giannini (playing the character ‘Mathis’ – he’s a superb actor) had the best dialogue scenes with Bond. Some of the action was in my opinion also back to the ‘just too far fetched’ scenes that Pierce Brosnan became notorious for…
My biggest gripe was with the villain – who just didn’t live up to what we’ve come to expect from the previous 21 films… he seemed too normal… at least in Casino Royale ‘Le Chiffre’ had an eye that wept blood!
The Bond girls… well, almost non existent really… the one doesn’t really count because Bond didn’t really have a “connection” with her and ‘Fields’ ended up dead after 20 minutes of screen time (nice nod to Goldfinger there though: with Field’s drowned and covered in Oil placed in exactly the same position as ‘Jill Masterson’ in Goldfinger when she was painted gold and suffocated.)
All in all… to me this simply could have been Bond playing Jason Bourne (another JB) in a “Bourne Identity” film… but the only problem with that is : The Bourne Trilogy has come and gone… and in those films the action, pacing, characters and “roof top chase scene” were all in a different league. If Casino Royale was a 10/10… Quantum of Solace only gets a 7/10… but I still love the movie.
By the way, I hear that Bourne 4 is already in pre-production… so it won’t be long before we seen Matt Damon back in action.
