Serves mainly as coda to far superior "Casino Royale"

Rating: 6/10 (10 December 2008)

Viewers who walk into "Quantum of Solace" without having seen "Casino Royale," but familiar with the series of James Bond movies, will scratch their heads throughout this film. They will wonder if they are actually in the right theater! This movie is not like other Bond films, often to its detriment. But it does add to the story told in "Casino Royale," and does make me interested to go on another adventure with this "new" Bond.
Things about this movie that are good:
-- Judi Dench (as "M") has a more substantial role than usual. I wouldn't want that to become the norm for Bond movies, but she's very good and the story elements involving "M" worked well.
-- Olga Kurylenko was an interesting female lead. Again, the story strayed from formula with the female lead, but that was fine. And she was more than mere eye-candy in this role.
Things about this movie that are not good:
-- The direction. There are more elements to the language of cinema than just the close-up and the extreme close-up. The fact that the director limited himself primarily to those two shots made the numerous action sequences far less interesting than they should have been.
-- The editing. Shots should be maintained for longer than 0.8 seconds every once in a while...
-- The writing. A little exposition never killed anyone... Bond goes from place to place and does exactly what he must, but we are never given any ideas about how he knew to do most of those things. He's not merely lucky, but this script presents him that way.