Stop the directors! Stop the editors! I want to get off!

Rating: 3/10 (17 November 2008)

This is the first time I ever came out of a Bond film at the cinema thinking, 'I enjoyed almost none of that.' And there was no mystery for me as to why I felt this way. I didn't have to weigh up the other pros and cons (it is not an unsophisticated film) or think far or deeply. I couldn't stand Quantum Of Solace because ninety-five percent of its action sequences are appallingly directed and edited. Endless, wobbly extreme closeups are cut together too rapidly into a meaningless dirge which prohibits you from discerning anything about the nature of the scene.
How many cars are participating in this car chase? Will I be allowed to glimpse anyone's face in this scene other than Bond's? Will I be allowed to glimpse even Bond's face? Which boat is in front? Where is anything in relation to anything else, ever? And just what was that? That blur in front of me for the past half a second, what the hell was it? The answers to these questions respectively throughout Quantum of Solace are, 'I have no clue, no, no, I don't know, I will never know, I don't know, I still don't know.'
I'm tired of reading any defence for the most extreme incarnation of this style of action coverage. It is purposeless obfuscation. It's anti-exciting, annoying and just plain rubbish. Bond films in particular are known for their history of spectacular action and stunts, and if you briefly consider any eighties Bond film, you'll recall that somewhere in it was a long, held shot of something amazing. People fighting on the back of an airborne plane, racing cars through Paris or pursuing each other down a mountain on skis. Compared to any one of those scenes, everything in Quantum is a disgrace, incapable of engendering marvel or wonder.
Perhaps I should try to be less catastrophic about the direction of cinema in general and just apportion blame directly to the guy from the Bourne films whose second unit did this to Quantum, and to Marc Forster, who directed the film, and either sanctioned or did not repel the Bourne-on-steroids content. Call me Mister Insane, but I demand the context, information and sense of place delivered by even the occasional wide shot. To see how Bond kung-fu'd an elevator full of guys would be cool, right? The event happens in this film, but what you actually see is a camera jerking crazily over ten inch wide patches of dark clothing, to the accompaniment of cabbages being walloped on the soundtrack. Imagine if Bruce Lee tried to get away with this crap. And this wasn't a well considered case of indicating what had just happened by offering the impression of it rather than the depiction of it, it was simply a continuation of the house style.
Quantum Of Solace takes anti-illuminating film-making to new, stupid lows!