Quantum of Solace

2008 Bond movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: James Bond runs into all sorts of problems as he tries to figure out what the titular organization.

This choppy and often incomprehensible--at least to me--direct follow-up to Casino Royale is a pretty big disappointment. Like car chases? This starts off with one that is almost stellar despite it consisting of dizzying shaky camera work. Then, things slow down only to pick up again with a foot chase. Daniel Craig's Bond seems to like running more than the other Bonds. Then, things slow down again, and Bond steals a motorcycle, a boat, a pick-up truck. You probably get the idea. It's almost like the writers of this were given a few action sequences to include and then instructed to build an entire plot around them. The results are muddy and confusing, but the main problem is that you just never really care about any of it. Craig still fits well in this more-serious and maybe stuffier incarnation of the character. I miss the gadgets and camp, but I do like what Craig does with the character, this rugged suavity with a much larger portion of actual human being. But isn't Bond really only as good as his villains? I really like Mathieu Amalric, but he doesn't get a lot to chew on here, and finding out what he's up to in this thing is a classic "Is that it?" moments. The Bond girls--Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton--look the part but underwhelm, but the latter has a cool name (Strawberry Fields) and there's a scene involving her that is either a nifty homage to a classic shot from an earlier Bond film or cheap recycling depending on how you look at it. The action sequences in this just feel a little too modern, and even my wife, who caught a glimpse of this while sitting around doing something else, said it looked more like a Bourne movie than a Bond movie. I didn't really hate this movie, but I was never really intrigued and probably a little bored. I'll give the third Craig Bond movie a shot in a week or two.