Quantum of Nonsense

Rating: 1/10 (5 December 2008)

When a new 007 movie opens I'm always eager to watch it on the opening weekend  yes, I'm a bond fan of old and love the series. However, with this entry I've waited until only now to view it - unlike other Bond movies, I won't be paying to see this again at the cinema. Sadly, since Daniel Craig came onto the scene I've felt increasingly alienated from the franchise. Undoubtedly Craig is a fine actor, but then again so is Bob Hoskins, but I'd imagine he has never been a serious contender for the part! Really if Craig were to appear in a Bond flick, he'd be best suited to either the Robert Shaw 'Red Grant' character in From Russia With Love, or that of 006 in Goldeneye. To have him playing the great man himself is frankly laughable. Anyway, that aside, there's very little in this film to affiliate it with its predecessors, QOS is simply an action movie and not a very good one at that. If we're to have countless set pieces with very little story in-between, at least make the action watchable. The camera filming the proceedings may as well have been placed in a cement mixer  don't get me wrong, from what I could make out, it looked pretty decent fair  although we'll never know because director, Marc Forster, insists on adopting this increasingly annoying practice of shaky camera work in a vain effort to make the viewer feel part of the action. For the record, this style of film making is woeful and the sooner this trends dies away the better  incidentally, Forster's previous films weren't action driven and boy does this show! So, a Bond movie without any opening gun barrel, no Q; no gadgets, no moneypenny, minimal use of the Bond theme, an actor who doesn't resemble the pre-conceived image the majority of the audience has of 007 and no utterance of the immortal line "Bond, James Bond"  I'm all for a change of direction in the series, the last two Pierce Brosnan efforts were tired and clichéd. Instead of working within the world of 007, the producers seem to have thrown in the towel and opted simply to make action movies with a character called James Bond instead of making actual James Bond movies. This is a fundamental mistake and only goes to affirm the notion that, where once 007 dictated the action movie genre, now it simply follows the rest.