An abundance of action with poor story development leaves a bittersweet taste

Rating: 6/10 (16 November 2008)

I went into Quantum of Solace will little expectations. I knew it would be hard to follow up Casino Royale. It is usually tough to make a sequel that stacks up to the predecessor. OK, The Dark Knight is a rare exception.
The movie opens with James Bond in a high speed car chase. What is a James Bond movie without some sort of car chase? And, you're probably wondering: "What could be wrong with that?" This chase scene is filmed with super-fast camera "snapshots". I am guessing Marc Foster was attempting to give viewers a shot of adrenaline and put them in the car with the drivers. It fails miserably. You never really know what you're watching, or who is in what car. For an scene that clearly cost a lot of money to produce, there is very little bang for buck.
There are a countless number of cool action scenes in this movie. I especially loved the scene when James Bond and Camille jump out of what is left of a cargo plane with only one parachute. The chute opens just in the nick of time.
The story Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis created for this sequel was much better than I had been hearing. The only problem is, the story is never fully developed due to an immense amount of non-stop action and the potential is never fully realized. In CasinoRoyale, I found the villain character, Le Chiffre, perfectly developed. An engaged audience member would be able to see through his exceptional intelligence at his character flaws and understand the reasons for his madness. In Quantum of Solace, I thought there was very poor character development for Camille (played by Olga Kurylenko) and Dominic Greene (played extremely well by Mathieu Amalric). Other than the Bolivian President being responsible for her father's death, we know nothing about Camille. We know even less of Dominic Greene, other than is a greedy, rich business man. But why is he the way he is?
There was really no time for any story or character development. After all, the movie runs for only around 90 minutes. I guess this will allow for theaters to have more showings of the movie. Something has to pay for those special effects. Another half hour of story development would have gone along way. There is not enough time to digest what is going on. I was often wondering how James Bond got from one place to another.
Some other notes: You should see Casino Royale before seeing Quantum of Solace. It is almost a must. There is no 2 minute recap before the movie starts like on some of your favorite T.V. shows after a to be continued episode.
My whole family went to see the movie; this includes my mother and sister. Both of them absolutely disliked the movie. They had no idea what was happening. Probably not the best date movie.
It is hard not to be impressed with some of the action sequences. And the movie still has the every important "coolness factor" associated with it. Olga Kurylenko is absolutely stunning. If they are going to keep spending this kind of money on Bond films, it might be a while before we see another one with the current state of the world's economy.
See this movie on the big screen. It will not be as good at home on DVD. Rating: 6/10.