What a mess!

Rating: 2/10 (10 October 2009)

Those of you who rank action above everything else will probably love this film, while those of you who were hoping for a good storyline, "Casinò Royale" style, will be bitterly disappointed. "Quantum" is nothing but a speedy succession of loud and fast paced action sequences, with no substantial elements in the story to uphold them. The worst part of it is that the action itself is not particularly memorable and at times incoherent, except for the beautifully shot Austrian Opera sequence and, perhaps, the "fall-out-of-the-plane" scene, a fact which certainly doesn't help the viewers forget the lack of structure and, on the whole, the sense of pointlessness the film conveys (not to mention the incessant "Quantum" video game ads in the cinema, but that's a matter of bad product placement). We are surely not witnessing the "back to the beginning" direction towards which "Casinò Royale" was headed and, unfortunately, the film cannot be compared with the humorously nonsensical Roger Moore era either, since it's missing the lightness of spirit necessary to overlook a weak premise and an even weaker development story-wise. That being said, I'm going to break a lance in favour of this film, at least in two respects: compared to the previous film, which had none, there's a bit of dark humour involved and Craig seems more comfortable in Bond's shoes. The Bond girl, Camille (Olga Kurylenko), is a mix between Carole Bouquet's Melina Havelock in "For your eyes only" and Carey Lowell's Pam Bouvier in "Licence to kill"... minus the former's magnetic charm and the latter's endearing sassiness. On the other hand the villain, Mr. Greene (Mathieu Amalric), is chillingly unsettling: his calm tone and quick eye, his heartless rationality and seemingly normal appearance provide, overall, a subtle and modern depiction of a psychopathic businessman, even though the character is not sufficiently developed in the script. A special mention goes to Giancarlo Giannini's Mathis, the only genuinely human character in a world populated by monsters. On a final note, I was rather disturbed by a scene near the end of the film which I think women in the audience will feel sensitive to: I recall a scene like that only being referred to explicitly in one of the Dalton films, possibly the closest in style and themes to this new Bond era.