So, I decided to brave the flood of teenage Twilight fans and go see Quantum of Solace last night. From what I could tell, going into the movie, it seemed more action and less spy, but I was still excited to see it. After I was done, I had some mixed opinions of the movie and thought I had just gone through and hour and a half of Michael Bay on crack, but it still wasn't a bad ride. Let me explain.
Bond is back, and he is brooding in this followup to Casino Royal, Daniel Craig picks right up where he left off, with the story starting twenty minutes after the end of the last movie (which means you need to see the first one before seeing the second or you will look like a monkey hooking up a surround sound). Daniel Craig is after the guy that put the hurting on his girlfriend, after a few great chase scenes, he realizes he has stumbled onto something much bigger with a group called QUANTUM (Reminds me too much of CHAOS, but whatever). Now, Bond is after this group and the people that harmed him at any cost. Along the way, he meets some really good characters, especially in Bond girl Olga Kurylenko who has an agenda of her own.
So, now that you know the story, let me get to the good in the movie. The action scenes were intense and the chases were very good. There is one scene he is in a boat and the entire time my mouth was hanging open, trying to soak up all the chase goodness only a Bond film can provide. Also, the characters were well portrayed, even if there wasn't as much back story as there could have been, Craig was good as a ticked off Bond, Olga played an equally disturbed Bond girl who actually has a story, Judy Dench plays a great M, as always, and the badguy, Mr. Green was very slimy and very unlikable, which is a good quality for a villain.
Now, the not so good. As I said before, this is very Michael Bay-ish, and I say that because I only saw one scene that was more than 4 seconds long, and most action scenes were barely 1 second before the camera cuts to another angle. This method is very good, used in moderation because he brings the audience to the edge of their seat, but it isn't used in moderation, it's throughout the entire movie, and most action scenes, the switching is so quick, it's hard to keep track of what is what, and which angle is up, you start to feel like your in Blair Witch at times.
As I had talked about in previous postings, this movie strays farther from the Bond of the cold war era, and more into the gritty, dark, bad ass anti-hero that seems to be all the rage in today's society (cough cough DARK KNIGHT cough cough), however, the movie did make a great action movie, but an only ok Bond movie. There was no Q, no great gadgets, just Bond beating the shit outta people. I would have like to see the traditional homage to Bond films past with the Martini line, or even a "Bond, James Bond," I would even have put up with a flight suit in the background, but this movie had none of that, it was too busy blowing things up and killing people. While I understand it's a new story for the classic character, I don't think its wise to not show some respect to the classic franchise.
Over all, not a bad action movie, I give it a 6.5 out of 10
Fun fact: First time that an actor (Jeffrey Wright) has played the Bond ally character of Felix Leiter in a consecutive Bond movie (the precursor film is Casino Royale (2006)). It is only the second time that an actor has played Leiter twice. David Hedison played him in Live and Let Die (1973) and Licence to Kill (1989).
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