Bland, James Bland or Royale With Cheese

Rating: 4/10 (12 November 2008)

After getting everything so right with "Casino Royale" (one of the best Bond movies, and, for me, THE best), the producers of the James Bond series have gotten its sequel all wrong with several strange decisions. From giving the movie the pointless title of "Quantum of Solace" (which only highlights the lack of Ian Fleming material they had to work with) to the awful, grinding dirge that they selected as the song by Jack White and Alicia Keys, things are already off to a bad start from the second the film kicks off.
Things get worse with their choice of Olga Kurylenko as the lead actress. After the fully-rounded character of Vesper Lynd and the unusual, yet fitting choice of the elegant Eva Green to play her in "Casino Royale", the casting of Bond's love interest was going to be crucial in the next movie. Vesper is a hard act to follow, especially as she is one of the few women in Bond history to actually get past Bond's defensive coldness and right into his heart. Unfortunately, the producers have reverted to casting a typical, bland, model-type who can't act as their choice of Bond babe. With her thick accent and English as her second language, Ms. Kurylenko mangles every line of dialogue she's given and it's often hard to understand what she's saying. There is also zero chemistry between her and Daniel Craig (there isn't even much sex in this movie or humour for that matter, vital ingredients in the best Bond movies). They hardly seem to notice each other. It's like they're acting in different movies.
Matthieu Amalric, as the Roman Polanski-lookalike villain, can't hold a candle to Le Chiffre in the last Bond movie. The fight between him and Bond at the end is laughable. He's stick-thin and tiny while the ripped Daniel Craig towers over him in height and width. Yet, we're expected to believe that he could beat up James Bond. Rubbish.
Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter is also completely wasted in this movie. He is given nothing to do having had such an important part to play in "Casino Royale."
The cinema I saw this in had the sound cranked up to the max which meant that the music and action scenes were absolutely deafening, the loudest I have ever heard in a cinema. It made for uncomfortable viewing, but that still didn't stop me spotting what a dodgy film this is.
The action scenes are totally perfunctory with no passion or inspiration behind them (particularly that time-wasting plane chase halfway through). The best action scenes in movies always come from the characters (look at how the classic car chase in "The French Connection" means so much because we've already seen the vicious villain kill a man in cold blood in the opening scene. He then tries to assassinate Gene Hackman's character, misses and kills a woman pushing a baby carriage. Gene Hackman desperately pursues him in a classic edge-of-the-seat car chase and we care because we want to see that nasty piece of work get his comeuppance. Here Daniel Craig fights baddies we know nothing about, so we don't care if he gets them or not. There is nothing personal between them.) It feels like the writers just throw in an action scene every ten minutes because they feel they have to obey the rules of action screen writing. Must do better next time, guys.
There are also too many references to other Bond movies, making it look like the writers were stuck for ideas and had to copy what had gone before. From having a girl on a bed covered with oil (instead of being covered with gold like Shirley Eaton was in "Goldfinger") to Bond dangling a baddie off a roof to force him to give up information (which Roger Moore did in "The Spy Who Loved Me") to the writers mostly ripping off the plot of "Licence To Kill" by having Bond disobey orders and become a rogue agent pursuing a vendetta against a criminal organisation. The movie lacks freshness and you feel like you've seen it all before, probably because you have.
"Casino Royale" was Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel and the last one that remained unfilmed. Without Ian Fleming's story, characters and dialogue to guide them this time, the writers have had to do everything from scratch on their own and it shows. This is a movie with no structure, no characters and, therefore, not much point. It even has an infuriating open-ending for the next movie. It's not a self-contained Bond film. If the producers were going to make "Casino Royale," "Quantum of Solace" and the next Bond film a trilogy of Bond's struggle to overthrow the Quantum organisation, then they should have followed George Lucas's structure with the original "Star Wars" trilogy, treating the three films like a three-act structure. This one should have been "The Empire Strikes Back" or the second act, where everything goes wrong for Bond and the Quantum organisation comes close to victory and leaves Bond nearly dead at the end of it. Instead, Bond swiftly beats every villain he's up against and his life is never really in any danger (he can jump out of a plane, freefall at hundreds of miles an hour, open his chute at the last minute and land without a scratch! Yeah, right). It becomes too easy for him after a while which makes for boring viewing. The producers need to create a villain who has Bond's number psychologically, someone that Bond is frightened of. That would be interesting.
I was hugely disappointed with this movie. It was a missed opportunity to build on the excellent "Casino Royale." They will need something spectacular to rescue Daniel Craig's run as Bond in the next movie. Get your thinking caps on guys!