No solace here

Rating: 6/10 (14 November 2008)

From one ardent Bond fan to the film makers: "Why did you lose confidence in the Bond franchise that you worked so hard to revitalize with Casino Royale? How can a can't miss revenge story line set up by the terrific ending of the previous film miss the mark so badly? 1. I think it was a colossal error to mimic the editing style of Bourne movies. The action scenes are incomprehensible! Where was Stuart Baird? or John Wright or Mark Goldblatt or Frank J.Urioste or the many other great action movie editors--all these guys owe a huge debt to Peter Hunt the editor of the great early Bond films. You set the gold standard for urgency and punch in editing fight scenes with the train fight scene in From Russia With Love which Peter Hunt assembled. If Quantum had done a better job here, that alone would make this movie a heck of lot better than it is. 2. Revenge is a great plot device, but a villain who is milquetoast at best simply does not generate any tension: There is no way this Greene was going to take Bond. Think about Sean Bean versus Pierce Brosnan or Pierce versus Robert Carlyle for genuine tension in the fight scenes. 3. The central plot angle is not fully developed--but it does not take much to do this right. You showed with Goldfinger and Goldeneye how to tersely set up the villains plans and make it believable. 4. Stealing from your own heritage is tacky. Did you not have any creative ideas other than to steal from Goldfinger for a gratuitous plot turn??? You pay your writers a ton of money to come up with exciting stories, right and this is the result? 5. A short running time is not bad; but when it is wasted on incoherent action scenes and a key plot advancement happens off screen, this reveals another error in judgment. In fact one character can be completely edited out without affecting the tone or the plot one bit and then you would have a 100 minute movie. Casino Royale has been criticised for its length. But i wonder how you could shorten that movie without eliminating something critical--you cant. The story is perfect there. Here alas, the movie seems much longer than it is! 6. Did you change your mind somewhere along the way like you seemed to do with Die Another Day? That movie began as a serious action movie and then suddenly morphed into a cartoon by the 60% mark. There are plenty of clues to suggest that this might have been the case with Quantum. The action scenes and the quiet scenes simply do not mesh. The quiet scenes really play well and are acted superbly. Electing to go with lots of manic movement substituting for action, it seems you are gambling that this is what the facebook generation will crave. Perhaps so, but the world has not changed so much since Casino Royale to nullify the story telling philosophy of that movie. What made you decide to abandon that approach?
I hope you make a lot of money because I will be waiting for the next installment. I am too much of a fan to take my marbles and go home. I will come back to the next film. This could have been a great movie but, honestly, it is simply ordinary this time around."