Quantum of Solace

November 21st, 2008 · No Comments

Ok, saw the new Bond flick on Wednesday night and I have very mixed feelings about it. To preface this i’ll say that I was a big fan of Pierce Brosnan’s bond and the over the top action and style of the Bond movies that separated them from every other action flick out there. They weren’t afraid to poke a little bit of fun at themselves and each movie that Brosnan played Bond for grossed more than each preceding Bond movie ever had so it wasn’t like he was tanking the franchise when they decided to reboot it with Daniel Craig.

Warning, there are *minor* spoilers ahead!

That being said, I did like a Casino Royale a lot and thought it captured a really interesting style and a new look and direction for Bond. Unfortunately, Quantum of Solace doesn’t seem to continue that theme quite as well due to poor direction, and even worse writing. The Bond villain feels like somebody who Interpol could just arrest and the plot revolves around a multi-national corporation trying to blackmail countries by hoarding water. Yes I know water is supposed to be the most precious natural resource and is becoming more scarce, but writing a believable plot around is where the writers seem to fail.

If you want to know what the new Bond flick plays like, watch Bourne Ultimatum. It is the better movie and uses the shaky cam just enough, not for every single action scene like QoS does. In QoS you rarely see more than a 1 second clip in the action scenes so it is extremely hard to get oriented and figure out where the heck the action is going. When you come out of the movie you need to take a nap because Bond was involved in a chase of some sort every other minute and so you were shaky-cammed to death.

I kid you not, the movie has these chases in roughly the following order: Car chase, foot chase, boat chase, foot chase, plane chase, foot chase, foot chase through exploding things, the end. It feels like Marc Forster (the director of Qos, Finding Neverland) was trying to see if he could have the most action ever in a Bond movie, and given the budget was the highest ever for a Bond film, I guess he could afford to. The thing is, so much of the action the audience will never be able to appreciate due to shaky cam all over the place and the fast cuts. We don’t get to appreciate the great location shots or stunt work at all of the previous scene before we are in another chase of some sort.

The shaky cam over-usage is something i’ve noticed in a lot of movies of late including the new Batman films in all of the fights Batman does there are extremely fast cuts, but at least they do occasionally use sweeping establishing shots to establish setting before moving in closer to see the action. The second Bourne movie also over-used shaky cam, but the third one had a nice balance.

Don’t get me wrong, I love high action movies as much as the next guy, but this one fell flat when the prior movie was so brilliantly executed. I’m not sure why they didn’t ask Martin Campbell to come back to direct (Casino Royale), perhaps he was busy with another project? I discovered via IMDB that Martin Campbell directed “Goldeneye” as well, which was one of my favorite Pierce Brosnan Bond flicks.

And no, i’m not someone who just grew up with Pierce Brosnan as Bond, I own many of the earlier movies and do like Sean Connery’s Bond portrayal a lot as well. Daniel Craig was a great Bond in Casino Royale, but without gadgets, a Bond woman (there is no real Bond woman in QoS), or a true Bond villain the movie falls flat for me. I’d give it no more than a 6/10 and only encourage you to see it in theaters if you are in the mood for a continous-action movie with no followable plot.