James Bond is dead! Killed by shakycam!

Rating: 1/10 (14 November 2008)

OK, so you've already heard the opening credits song is lame. It is, but that's the least of this flick's problems.
Then again, this movie might be for you if...
...you didn't get enough of Vesper whatshername in Casino Royale. She's mentioned ad nauseum as Bond's motivation in QoS, which is just as well, because the villains in this movie are so uninspired they probably couldn't get a real secret agent to stay an extra five minutes at the office: "Oh, it's Dominic Greene? I'll follow up in the morning. Evening, Moneypenny!"
...you needed to see James Bond destroy another Italian construction site.
...you were always upset that there were no scenes of Bernard Lee as M tweezing his nasal hairs. In this one you get to see Dame Judi Dench applying and removing face cream, so that's pretty close. It could have been worse, for a minute it looked like a setup for a nude scene.
That's right, you might enjoy this movie if...
...you thought Joe Don Baker's character in The Living Daylights was too well developed and you prefer your overweight military stooges to have less depth.
...you are sick of the memorable, relentless villainous sidekicks with special abilities, like Odd Job, Jaws, Tee Hee, and Red Grant. In this movie, the sidekick's only powers are a bad Jim Carrey Dumb and Dumber haircut and a creepy Quentin Tarantino vibe. And unlike the creepiest James Bond villain ever - Crispin Glover's dad - the QoS sidekick doesn't add any comic relief.
...you are a big fan of the Bourne, Batman, Blair Witch school of shakycam, 1/2-second per scene editing. This movie has at least 5 'big' action sequences that are utterly inscrutable. I think one of them was a car chase, and there might have been a boat in there somewhere, I'm not sure. Maybe some really cool stunts were performed in the making of QoS, but only the crew members know for sure, because it's too hard to tell from the finished product.
In fact, I'm confident you'll love this movie if...
...you hate high-tech gadgets on boats, cars, and planes, and would prefer Bond to defeat vast armies of better equipped foes armed only with the immutable laws of Hollywood (im)probability.
...you are tired of the elaborate sets used for the big finales in previous James Bond movies and wish they would just get real already and blow up a 3-story box out in the middle of nowhere with pretty much nothing at stake.
...you already knew that most cops are bad (Pride and Glory) and most government agents are bad (Body of Lies), but needed to be reminded that the USA is so bad it would even sell out James Bond.
...you have been waiting for Hollywood to give another South American country its comeuppance ever since Homer Simpson and family went to Brazil. The Bolivian air force doesn't come off too well in this one.
...you're a big Airwolf fan and miss all those scenes of antique airplanes chasing each other. Too bad in this one Stringfellow Hawke doesn't come swooping in and finish them both off.
As a fan of Timothy Dalton (from Flash Gordon, not The Rocketeer), I am always glad to see his JB films move up a notch or two from the bottom ranks. Frankly, his .500 batting average as Bond is better than Brosnan's, and Quantum of Solace makes Licence to Kill look like Lawrence of Arabia. QoS is so bad, I'm pretty sure I could actually re-watch The World is Not Enough before I could sit through this turkey again.
Totally apart from representing the artistic nadir of the series, Quantum of Solace is of major historical significance for another reason. Along with Transformers and Casino Royale, it can be placed in a time capsule so that future historians will have evidence of all of the really cool cars that American automakers failed to make available for sale in the U.S. before they went bankrupt. The new Camaro is taking longer to release than the Boeing 787, and the last two James Bond movies have featured very attractive small cars from Ford that are apparently for sale only in the Caribbean. WTF?
On the other hand... OLGA KURYLENKO!!!