Quantum of Solace 2008

Flying high off the back of Casino Royale, Daniel Craig and co. return with this poorly-titled, somewhat short entry into the annals of Bond history.

The most glaring sore point is the weak, badly executed plot. We follow a businessman backing a Bolivian coup in return for the nation’s water supply. It seems like something for a larger authority to get involved with rather than a semi-rogue super spy. This feels like a real MI6 operation, and a dull one at that.

Quantum of Solace was made during the writer’s strike and Craig himself has admitted that he had to co-write much of it with the director, the two making it up as they went along. This is a reasonable excuse but obviously it doesn’t make it a better story.

There’s a lot of action packed into the film. None of it really serves any real purpose other than to distract from the fact nothing is happening; but some of the sequences are really quite entertaining so in a way this tactic pays off! The opening car chase is a like-it-or-loathe it pastiche of a Bourne film; it’s a brash start and at least it tries to make some sort of statement. There’s just something missing there though and things quickly become confusing instead of enthralling.

The opera scene is also noteworthy, it’s a cool idea and Craig’s smug superiority fits the moment. As he uncovers the members of an illegal organisation one by one, it’s satisfying to see they have been rumbled. Unfortunately like the rest of the film it starts with a bang and ends with a whimper, the scene not really going anywhere.

There are some good central performances as usual. Daniel Craig has successfully put his own spin on Bond now and makes you want to see anything he does. Judi Dench gets a little more to do than last time. Olga Kurylenko is exotic enough to fit the bill but doesn’t actually get anything to do. It’s a shame that the only Bond girl who doesn’t sleep with Bond should be so wishy-washy. Gemma Arterton suffers a similar fate although she does manage to give some extra depth to her limited role.

The same can be said for the villain, who is so unremarkable it’s hard to remember what role he actually plays. The idea is supposed to be that Bond is up against a ‘normal’ bad guy, which is ‘real’ and therefore scary but it doesn’t actually make it any more menacing, just boring.

Quantum of Solace isn’t a particularly bad Bond film compared to some of the dreck we’ve seen so far, but just when Casino Royale showed us that the franchise was beginning to take a fresh start; this is a step in the wrong direction. It’s a film like no other in the series, and Craig is always a joy to watch, but otherwise this is a forgettable moment in Bond’s history.

http://benoliver999.com/film/2015/09/26/quantumofsolace/

There are some individual moments that work, but this is overall a mess.
The story is hard to follow, the new characters aren’t interesting or memorable, and as many have pointed out: the editing sucks.
Just watch the airplane chase in this film and the one in Mission Impossible: Fallout back to back, and look at the difference in clarity, camera placement, choreography, creativity in the action beats; it’s a night and day difference.
Even the cinematography and music are nowhere near as good as in Casino Royale.

Daniel Craig elevates the script a lot, because without him this would mostly feel like a haphazard attempt to rip off the Bourne franchise.
Normally I’d add Judi Dench to the list of positives, but M has one of the dumbest scenes I’ve ever seen in a Bond film here.
A little context for the scene: James Bond has been a too violent and agressive, the CIA wants him, so M comes over to have Bond arrested.
What happens next? Well, James Bond knocks M’s agents out after he’s handcuffed, M and James meet again, and M’s cool with Bond because he’s “my agent, and I trust him.”
…..
I guess he wasn’t her agent 30 seconds earlier?
Moreover, why would anyone fly to the other side of the world in order to ‘arrest’ their agent, if they don’t want that to happen?
I know why: because they wanted to create a dramatic beat.
But it doesn’t feel earned, and because the movie’s full of moments like that, most viewers will at least subconsciously feel that this isn’t working on a dramatic level.

4/10

James Bond versus Nestlé, featuring: greenwashing, offhand showing the CIA being terrorists, and only a little unintelligible British mumble acting. Possibly the only Bond film made, even to date, that has what counts as meaningful commentary on the geopolitical and economic events it sensationalizes. I have to admit, I came away unimpressed upon my initial viewing in theatres, and I can chock that up to my own ignorance of the world. I just re-watched it, and I have to say it may be the best executed Bond film of the ~15 I've seen. I'll have to re-watch Skyfall, but this may actually be the best all-around Bond film.

The reality of the plot seems to have mirrored the backdrop of real world power structures too much for audiences to have appreciated it, ironically enough, given how high stakes the reality is, but I can't point to any particular flaw in the plot or script, which is nearly unheard of (perhaps the mention about running out of oil, but that will still happen eventually, and people thought it was more imminent around 2008.) It's very tight, and that's something that the extremely bloated Bond films have needed since the sixties. People may have complaints about the action, though I'm not sure why. Action scenes have always been the downfall of the pacing for most Bond films in my experience, but this film neatly opens and intersperses the plot with them instead of having the entire film overtaken by laboriously long and tedious action scenes and, followed by the perennial favorite of "Bond gets captures, but the villain doesn't kill him for ~reasons~", which was thankfully absent here.

I can't help but think this would have fared better and been memed instead of forgotten, had it been released ten years later.

This isn't a bad movie by any means but after "Casino Royale" set the bar very high it was a bit of let down.
Despite having all the ingredients I never really felt I watch a Bond movie. I can't explain it but something felt off. I like Craig's Bond very much. The rawness and solitude his Bond displays. He's a wrecking ball instead of a scalpell at this point. His motivations are understandable and relatable. He feels human despite practicall being invincible.
I felt this movie had too much action for actions sake. Especially at the beginning you hardly had time to breath as one sequence chased the next. Which didn't leave much room to establish the story. And that's the biggest issue - the story. Too busy, too much cramped into a movie that is already among the shortest Bonds. Green didn't made a great villain. He was just boring. Olga Kurylenko's character was rather flat. She seemed more like an apendix than an integral part of the story. And did I mention the theme song ? No ? because it's that awfull.

The good stuff ? Judi Dench - once more. I do like her very much in this role. She took it and made it her own. And that's not taking anything away from her predecessors. Stunts are once more top notch but like mentioned above a bit too many.

The "Goldfinger" hommage scene with Gemma Arterton was nice. Especially since the did that one in oil. And one thing I noticed right at the beginning: I remember reading the press making fun of Craig that he got an automatic Aston in "Casino Royale". Writing that this Bond can't shift. Well the director seemed to making very clear this time that Bond can drive stick.

*So cool.*

After seeing Casino Royale a few months ago, I realized something, there is a big re-imagining of the James Bond series. James Bond is now more serious, a little darker, and has a lot more edge. I grew up with the 007 films, my mom and I watched them together all the time, they were always a blast to watch. Now I'm grown up and Daniel Craig is the new James Bond and he is so cool and smooth, he's taken on a very charismatic Bond, he'd make Sean Connery proud. Quantum of Solace is the very first James Bond movie that is actually a sequel, it continues right where Casino Royale took off, so there is no off set when it comes to the story. The action is jam packed, I loved a lot of the action/fight scenes incredibly, but I'd say it's a notch below Casio Royale since the director didn't seem to know how to edit well in those sequences, because I don't know about you, but I couldn't tell what was going on or who was getting hit. But the story is a great continence to Casino Royale.

Betrayed by Vesper, the woman he loved, 007 fights the urge to make his latest mission personal. Pursuing his determination to uncover the truth, Bond and M interrogate Mr White who reveals the organization which blackmailed Vesper is far more complex and dangerous than anyone had imagined. Forensic intelligence links an Mi6 traitor to a bank account in Haiti where a case of mistaken identity introduces Bond to the beautiful but feisty Camille, a woman who has her own vendetta. Camille leads Bond straight to Dominic Greene, a ruthless business man and major force within the mysterious organization.

Quantum of Solace is completely worth the watch, it was a lot of fun, it has it's small flaws. I think the editing just could have been a little better, like I said, some scenes go so fast that you can barely keep your head on from turning side by side. Daniel Craig is a great Bond, he is still incredibly cool to watch. However, Olga Kurylenko, pretty girl, but not exactly the most interesting "Bond Girl", nothing about her really stood out to me, so I hope they'll do better the next film. However, I did enjoy Quantum of Solace, it's a great action film and an excellent addition to the Bond series.

My score: 8/10.

I have not watched many 007 movies — only Goldeneye and Casino Royale. I don’t know if these ones starred by Daniel Craig represent the essence of the franchise, or if they are the heyday. Anyway, I just don’t think this franchise is for me.

The opening scene with the theme song is always cool. However, the first real scene, where Bond is chasing some guy didn’t connect with me.
The camera shakes too much to a point where we cannot see what’s happening. And the cuts, oh my god, why so many of them, really! I think that every half second we get a cut to another angle. I believe they did all of this as an attempt to make the action more dynamic in the way the Bourne franchise did. Unfortunately, in this one the results are not good. It only makes everything not believable and my head ache.

I don’t like the cinematography as well, the color palette that’s used in these movies with Craig doesn’t really fit with the atmosphere and story they are telling. But hey, that’s just my opinion, I don’t know shit.

Now into the plot of the film. It’s not good either, not even close. The whole story is so confusing, it creates several unnecessary conflict and situations in order to makes things a little harder and supposedly more interesting (what the hell is that firewall dialog by the U.S. agents, it doesn’t make any sense). What bothers me is that there are moments where we could use some explanation of how something did happen and we don’t get it.
There’s a twist every twenty minutes, which is really annoying. Also, there’s so much happening in this movie that makes the film so dragged on. The pacing is really bad, although the duration of Quantum of Solace is about 1h50min, it felt like at least the double.
Which reminds me of something, why does the film gets this title? I must’ve been sleeping during the movie or something like that because I simply didn’t get it. I guess that only the word “quantum” was used in the movie and maaaybe two times, three at the best. What is Quantum of Solace and what does that have to do with the plot?

About the cast, it is good. Craig represents James Bond to me, I like him. The supporting cast is ok. I’d like to know how did M get to the position she is now. Because man, she never knows anything about what’s happening and doesn’t act as well. In the beginning of the movie, her and Bond are betrayed and while Bond chases the guy, the man they are interrogating is left on the ground and obviously escapes, cause M just desperately lefts running away. She’s an agent, she’s been trained and she’s got be super badass to get where she is, how does she act like this?
Not only that, in every movie she suspects 007 turned to the dark side and puts him on ground. 007 is the agent she should trust the most, if she doesn’t trust him, just fire him already.

What’s the point of Gemma Arterton’s character? She appears for fifteen minutes and serves just as a way so the film can get from point A to point B. She’s just there to help Bond and get him laid, after that’s done, they kill her. What a waste by the writers.
And I did not understand why Mathis went in this adventure with Bond, leaving his nice home in Italy and even worse: how did he trust a “friend” of his that is an army general of Bolivia where one of the villains of the movie practically owns the country.

Overall, it’s not terrible, but it is bad. Watching these two movies with Daniel Craig just made me want to watch Mission Impossible or John Wick.

It was bound to be tough to match the runaway success of Casino Royale, but this doesn't even seem to make an effort. As generic action pictures go, it's fine: the screen is well-stocked with explosions, cars and women, and the production is extremely stylish. It does assume quite a lot of the viewer in terms of remembering names, faces and circumstances from the preceding chapter, but as a direct sequel much of that can be forgiven.

Solace's major flaw - and, as a Bond picture, this is utterly unforgivable - is that it routinely gets caught up in dull, blasé situations and lingers. A long stretch near the end of the second act damn near put me to sleep, and the plot never seems like it's too concerned about where it's going, nor does Bond himself. Several action scenes had potential (the flick is fully equipped with chases by land, sea and air) but the director is so head-over-heels for Bourne-styled handheld shots that he completely smothers us with them.

Daniel Craig rarely gets the chance to shine in this chapter, his foil seems overmatched and insubstantial, and the big payoff at the end comes off as a cheap, hollow moral victory. Underwhelming all around, and completely lacking in the grins and winks that gave previous films in the series their character.