Monday 3 November 2008

Quantum of Solace.



New James Bond, so all the other reviews I've been meaning to do have been bumped down. 

Quantum of Solace.

The difficult second movie.  So is it as good as Casino Royale? No, but it is still good, just a few wrong turns have seen Bond's latest outing slip below the admittedly high standards of Casino. The problems start near the very beginning, with the first chase scenes, Marc Forster adopts the Bourne ideal that all actions scene should be filmed with very lots of close-up shots and that there should be a ridiculous amount of cuts in a short space of time. This provides a headache more than anything and was the primary reason for me why the first two Bourne movies were so bad that I didn't even watch the third.  Fortunately, Forster changes tack later on in the film and begins to include some wider, longer shots that were a great relief and made for much more appealing action sequences. The other problem with this Bond movie is the plot. It seems to leave quite a lot unexplained and I felt that the end of movie had a very rushed feeling about it.

On to the good points then, the main one being Bond himself, or rather Daniel Craig. He manages for me to perfectly portrays Bond's psychological struggle and his attempts to find his Quantum of Solace. Daniel Craig really makes this movie what it is, and is already for me one of the best Bond's ever.  Olga Kurylenko is also quite excellent, she is a different sort of Bond girl, less of a shag 'em and bag 'em type and more of a real character, with development. One scene in particular where she is reliving a traumatic childhood memory is excellent, her eyes convey brilliantly the characters fear. Mathieu Amalric is also very frightening as a suave sophisticated 'villain'. This is helped I think by him just being a pretty scary looking guy in the first place anyway. The rest of the cast are just there as filler for me, even Judy Dench doesn't really make a lasting impression. 

I feel had they given themselves another half hour of screen time, then used it develop the plot rather than blow more things up this could have been even better than Casino Royale. However, they didn't, and it isn't, so there you go.

7/10

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