Quantum of Solace… is more like.. Quantum of Sh….

In my humble opinion, Casino Royale was fantastic, almost perfect! It had a great mix of emotion, storyline, and action; things that the James Bond franchise was missing for many years under Brosnan. So one could imagine my enthusiasm to the follow-up movie in the revived Bond franchise: Quantum of Solace. Luckily, living in South East Asia has its perks, I saw the movie this past week and will now supply a review (minus the spoilers of course!).

The movie opens up where the first film left off and features a set of action sequences that in my opinion were lackluster. Most of the fight scenes reminded me of things we’ve seen in past Bond films..minus the aerial rope battle (that was cool). I won’t get into each scene and why I felt it was good or bad. But overall, I felt that the storyline for this particular endeavor lacked the fire of Casino Royale. Bond rarely said anything and when he did it came out as one-liners. Most importantly the movie felt poorly put together. There was no real reason for the main-Russian girl character. lol Her role was extremely disposable and seemed as if she was in the film simply because she looked good.

The main villain is no more threatening than a school girl attacking you with a over-sized lollipop; not to mention his devious plan was weak and … pretty lame. The film highlighted only a small section of the “terror network” that Bond had been chasing in the first film to uncover. It felt as though the body of the film was unnecessary to the overarching storyline. They could’ve skipped over the entire plot and simply shown the last 10 minutes of the film and it would have sufficed.

Despite this, there were some entertaining action sequences and some amusing interactions between Bond and various characters (i.e. Ms. Strawberry Fields). In ending, I felt that this movie seemed rushed, full of fluff, and regurgitated. I wanted something fresh, like we had seen in Casino Royale. I wanted a story line that fed off what was set in place from the original film. It was as if the writers took the theme of “revenge” and decided to showcase every single example of revenge they could think of on film; almost like they betrayed the base story. Daniel Craig is still a kick-ass Bond, and I hope the franchise redeems itself after this mishap.

[Rating: 2.5/5]