Bond fans don't have to be ashamed anymore

Rating: 8/10 (6 November 2008)

Bond's 22nd, and Craig's 2nd, adventure got mixed reviews in the British and Dutch press. Undoubtedly this is due to the high standards set by 'Casino Royale'. I, as an avid Bond-fan regularly plagued by nightmares caused by 'The World is not Enough' and especially ' Die Another Day' (Madonna as a sword-fighter in a Bond-film?), am still very much excited by the reinvention of the series that started two years ago.
Comparisons to the Bourne trilogy are as much to the point as they are irrelevant. It is just the result of the visual style of action films these years, a style driven to the extreme in 'Cloverfield', and obviously present in 'Quantum of Solace'. However, Bond is not Bourne. Matt Damon had the disadvantage of his boyish looks, which made his amorous relationship impropable, and his amnesia, that robbed him from both character history and emotional depth. Daniel Craig's interpretation of Bond is fascinating in every part of dialogue (especially those with a brilliant Judi Dench as M).
Critics emphasizing the supposed lack of content in the story are blinded by what seems an overload of action and geographical changes. The travelling around the world is indeed too much, and is annoyingly accompanied by typography in the frame (why do we need to read that bond is in Bolivia if we've already been told he is going there). Certain sequences tend to go on for too long or are too fragmentary: especially the 'Port-au-Prince' chapter.
On the other hand the writers have done away with much of the typical explanatory, pace-killing dialogue that hindered especially the Pierce Brosnan films. We will not see villains bringing about their own demise by explaining to Bond there plan to wreak havoc upon the earth. One could even say that main thug Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) gets too little screen time.
But QoS makes up for these minor flaws by offering an incredible pace and stunning performances by Craig, Dench, Amalric and Jesper Christensen. The latter is scary in his lack of fear of torture after being captured and wounded by Bond. Furthermore there are at least three utterly breathtaking sequences. First of all the car chase that opens the film with a blast. Second: a short scene showing the despair of a Bolivian rural village, which gives the renewed Bond series an unexpected social dimension. Most impressing however is the Bregenz scene. A scene that, through clever dialogue, its combination of images and music, and its cross-cutting with a modern performance of Tosca, offers something never seen before in a James Bond movie. If only for this scene one should see the film in a movie theatre.
Summarized: not as balanced as Casino Royale, but still very entertaining, and much, much better than the rubbish offered to us in the Brosnan years (with the exception of 'GoldenEye'). Bond fans don't have to be ashamed anymore.