Quantum of Storyline

Rating: 6/10 (1 November 2008)

I loved Casino Royale. It was fast-paced, exciting & featured a truly macho James Bond. It could've been subtitled, "Bond Begins". Brilliant. Quantum of Solace is supposed to be a sequel to Casino Royale & the opening few moments leave you in no doubt of this. The fast-paced excitement of "Casino" continues also with some fantastic stunts & the usual mix of fast cars & violence typical of the new-style Bond. So far, so good. So what went wrong? Those previously mentioned stunts were edited in such a way that Bond seems to have become a fusion of Batman, Flash & Spiderman. The editing techniques used were too sharp leaving the audience no chance to suspend their disbelief at what 007 seems capable of. As with "Casino", we get to see Bond bleed a lot but what we don't see is how he's able to move from one side of the world to another & back so quickly he doesn't have time to change his clothes! As for the story... I can only imagine there must be a "Director's Cut" version of this film knocking around somewhere. A version that will surely be about an hour longer to enable some of the unanswered questions & character developments to be explained. It's not the worst James Bond film, & Daniel Craig is fantastic once more, it's just that plot gives way to too many stunts (yes, I know Bond is famous for stunts) & the film doesn't seem to know whether to follow the radicalization of "Casino Royale" or hark back to the Bond of yore. I heard somewhere that "Quantum of Solace" was faithful to the spirit of Ian Fleming's creation. Aside from a recipe for the famous vodka-martinis, I fail to make that connection myself. Can't wait for the DVD so I can slow the action down & try to make sense of it all!