Quantum of Solace - a disappointing mess

Rating: Null/10 (10 November 2008)

To give this film an "Awful" rating might seem overly harsh, but to me this is truly one of the worst movies, not to mention greatest disappointments ever. I hardly ever walk out of movies, but this time I needed real will power to remain in my seat.
After the excellent "Casino Royale", my hopes were high that the follow-up would at the very least offer good action entertainment. On might argue that the new interpretation of Bond in Casino Royale was more Bourne than Bond, but irrespective of that it was a solid piece of action craftsmanship with a decent plot.
In contrast, "Quantum of Solace", is a horrifically inept attempt at creating "action" through music-video-style editing. The entire movie is chopped into 15 to 60 frame cuts (each one to two seconds, a new camera angle). A highly annoying practice that greatly distracts you from following the plot (had there been one of any merit). Even the dialog scenes suffer from these continuous cuts. Try this: while watching the movie, count "one, two, three..." for every scene. See how often, if ever, you get past two. To add insult to injury, the action scenes have been shot with a number of shaking hand cams that, in conjunction with the constant cuts, produce a complete visual mess.
The shooting and editing ruin this film to such an extent that script, plot, dialog and character development hardly matter. Just as well since all are remarkably poor. Never have Bond characters been more one-dimensional and wooden, feeling more like computer game characters than real people.
Quantum of Solace is a sad example of form over substance, and very bad form over virtually no substance in this particular case.
Maybe Marc Foster was trying to do something "new" for the sake of being different. Maybe he thinks that a multitude of fast cuts and shaky shots equals "action". He's wrong.
What he has created can best be described as a 106 minute long MTV Video of a computer game.
What a shame!