A disappointing sequel

Rating: 4/10 (8 November 2008)

I don't mind having Bond films with a different style from the old ones. But while Casino Royale succeeded in making a good film out of this new style, this one fails.
The plot is mainly fine, tracking Bond as he follows each lead he finds, and travelling to various exotic locations in the process (incidentally, I wasn't impressed by the use of different fonts for each of the location captions), but the pacing starts dragging after a while. The content of the action scenes is very good, but they would be much more enjoyable if it wasn't for the camera work. It's quite shaky during some of the action, while the editing is much too fast and pretty annoying (although it usually doesn't prevent you from keeping track of what's going on).
Daniel Craig's acting as Bond has gone downhill from Casino Royale: he seems pretty flat most of the time. The main villain, Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), is never as threatening as Le Chiffre. The main Bond girl in the film (Olga Kurylenko) is nothing special. I liked the second (Gemma Arterton) better as a character, but her presence is relatively brief and a little pointless.
We'll have to see how the Bond series goes from here, but whether they go back to traditional Bond, or continue in the same vein as Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, the filmmakers will be better off taking more inspiration from the former than the latter.