Is this a good Bond movie?

Rating: 8/10 (30 November 2012)

A car chase, rooftop chase, apartment fight, Boat scene, Opera shootout, plane scene, elevator bust-up,hotel shoot-out.. all in 106mins of a psychopath Bond on a revenge rampage, whilst unravelling an evil plot, pissing off special branch and the CIA& losing some friends on the way
Is this a good 'Bond film'? Probably not-Bond isn't cheerful and charming enough throughout. Is this a good film about Bond? Yes.
I love the James Bond formula of the exotic locations, the gadgets, women with innuendo names, genius villains&crazy strong henchmen trying to blow up the world.
However this is primarily a character driven story of Bond coming to terms with the Vesper situation, Did she betray him, why? who was her bf? It's only at the end of the movie you realise that this definitely was Bond's primary motivator. Having all the bond formula in this story would dissolve the whole revenge/ solace flex.
The action scenes are fast, ruthless&angry- they are a metaphor for his emotions. The action scenes themselves tell a story instead of being self-contained forced but really fun set pieces. Due to the Bond's 'accidental'casualty count the audience&M are left wondering if Bond has gone over the edge.
The other aspect of the plot is what the Green Planet front are up to.There is also no world domination via one plan but a more up-to-date realistic organisation. They are clearly bad but their plan is unclear. Is it land?government? oil?-It ends up being the water supply of a country. We take this confusing journey with Bond. Therefore, fittingly, the name of the organisation is Quantum. Greene Planet is simply one of many 'evil'plans they have. The name to me also conveys how small Bond is to this organisation, he is not the their centre of attention until the end- The bad guy doesn't invite him to dinner& reveal his plan...Similarly Bond doesn't care about Greene (until he kills Field's), he wants what he knows about Vesper. There is nothing over the top about Greene, his just in charge of this one Quantum project, a grimy small French businessman.
The CIA are 'in bed with Greene' &so are aspects of the British government too. Bond is ordered to stop but they are clearly up to no good. Motivated by his revenge and/or his duty he continues anyway.
This reminds me of a Mathus quote where he speaks of good and evil becoming 'blurred' and an Ian fleming quote from Casino Royale
"Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts."
Greene, Greene Planet &their relationship with governments are a perfect up to date example to Fleming's quote in the real world.
Bond's relationship with M is tested. Especially after Agent Field's death. Field's (a Bond girl) was a woman bedded by Bond within 5 minutes of meeting her, classic 007 style. However her death is cleverly used to further Bond's character development. Covered in oil, M questions Bond if he even cares. In turn the audience questions it. Bond comes back and confirm's he does with a heartfelt speech. There was more character development in 5 minutes of QoS then most Bond's combined (as their should be because it's part of the origin story!).
The Bond girl he meets on the way, Camille, mirrors Bond's pain - she wants revenge too. Probably the closest a bond girl has got to being Bond's equal since Xenia. She actually gets her revenge by herself...she just needs saving because of her one weakness of fire from her childhood. Oh&Bond doesn't bed her at the end because that wouldn't make any sense. This is perhaps the most forward thinking Bond for women, just because Camille was sleeping with the bad guy doesn't mean that Bond automatically gets to bed her. Compare this to the sex slave in Skyfall...
At the finale of the film the revenge count stacks up. Bond want's Greene for vesper, but he also wants revenge for Field's death and the head of Police for Mathus' death, and Camille is after the General for murdering her family.
When the film ends, Bond finds what he was looking for and gets his Solace, and becomes the more well rounded Bond we know. M say's ' I want you back'. Bond says 'I never left'. Then the Bond intro happens. This is when you realise what the whole point of the film was if you were still confused.
So much stuff is crammed into 106 minutes, it's amazing! However the problem with this film was that the vesper's death and betrayal happened at the end of the previous film. Then this film was too short and moved so fast that the references and reminders of his motivation just couldn't sink in. That combined with the addition of Bond&audience unravelling a mystery evil plan was information overload. When I first watched the film I was confused, later I watched it back to back with Casino Royale and I fully appreciated it.
This is not a classic Bond film. However it's a brilliant much needed part of the collection that I love. I expected a classic Bond films to follow this one but they went with skyfall rebooting Craig's Bond's feeling all over again. Now I'm unsure about what to think about what direction the franchise is taking- you can't keep having character development Bond movies, that's not what Bond is about- His already a well rounded super spy. You can have it in the originally intended origin story but now can we get back to normal Bond please - you know the Bond that has managed to last 50 years.