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"Casino Royale" managed to do for the Bond films what J.J. Abrams is hoping to do with his upcoming Star Trek – reboot a franchise that seems to have grown stale and outdated. "Quantum of Solace" tries to cash in on that by seamlessly taking up where we left at the end of the previous film. Intent on revenge for Vesper’s death, Bond (Daniel Craig) is on a mission to capture the guilty parties, seemingly about to lose it and becoming a rogue in the process. He jumps, flies, drives and runs through an incoherent plot about a group posing as environmentalists while at the same time attempting to install a new dictator in Bolivia with the help of the CIA in order to get to the country’s natural resources. On Bond’s side this time is Camille (Olga Kurylenko), Bond girl with her own motives for wanting revenge on the dictator to be. Daniel Craig still delivers as a fine, steely-eyed Bond, but sadly doesn’t get to show his acting range. The only other high point is Dame Judi Dench’s performance as M, who gets a lot of screen time and we finally learn what M stands for for Bond. The scriptwriters (Paul Haggis amongst them) must have given up on the audience completely, as the plot is confusing at best. The goal seems to be to go from point A to C quick enough to mask the contrivances and plot-holes as best as possible - ironically, one plot contrivance actually has Bond jump into a hole. This isn’t helped by turning the franchise into a series of films that can’t stand on their own anymore. While previous films had only loose ties to the preceding Bonds, anyone who hasn’t seen "Casino Royale" will be more than just lost watching this new installment.
Uninspired is the word that comes to mind quickly. The film blatantly rips off the Jason Bourne series (shaky-cam chase sequence over roofs and through windows included) and shamelessly plunders its own predecessors (think Goldfinger only in black). The title doesn’t make a lick of sense and everything that makes any Bond movie such a nostalgic experience (gadgets! one-liners!) has been erased from "Quantum of Solace", which someone seems to have realized, making sure we get it was Bond by adding the famous camera shot through a gun’s barrel at the end almost as an afterthought. Worse, the direction looks amateurish. Marc Forster seems to have discovered parallel editing and the fact that throwing people through glass must equal cool when starting on this film. It appears as if Forster is as lost as a director as the audience is at the end and it’s quite telling that the quieter moments feel completely out of place with the relentless action sequences directed by a second unit led by Dan Bradley who previously worked on, you guessed it, the Bourne franchise. Forster can’t find a balance between action and character scenes (and there was some promise in the latter), and ultimately, the film is too fuddled, too unbalanced and provides nothing new or inventive on any front, quoting all the wrong bits and going completely awry after the great "Casino Royale". Image: © MGM/Columbia Pictures |
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