A weaker than average Bond Film

Rating: 6/10 (25 October 2009)

I had put off watching this for a while as I'd heard negative things about it and after the excellent "Casino Royale" I didn't want to see Bond in a poor film. When I had an opportunity to borrow a copy of the film I decided I'd put off viewing it long enough. At first I wasn't too impressed, the car chase opening was good enough but nothing we hadn't seen before and the title song was a contender for the worst opening song to date.
Set just after the end of "Casino Royale" Bond is seeking revenge for death of Vesper, he has captured Mr White and is about to interrogate him. Before he can get started Mr White says he is part of a secretive organisation with people placed everywhere... a second later one of M's bodyguards shoots her and facilitates White's escape. Bond gives chase but fails to catch him. He ends up following a lead that takes him to Haiti, Austria and finally Bolivia. The lead he is following is supposed environmental campaigner Dominic Greene during this pursuit he meets the main "Bond girl" Camille, a member of Greene's organisation who appears to have crossed him. As Bond gets closer to Greene he is ordered to stand down; second "Bond girl" Fields is dispatched to bring him home and the CIA are trying to kill him because they think Greene has found oil in Bolivia.
The film wasn't as bad as I'd feared but it was a bit of a mess; we were given little information about the sinister organisation apart from its name: Quantum, presumably this was to partly justify the film's title. I won't spoil Greene's goal here but will say it didn't exactly seem the sort of thing a Bond villain would usually be up to. Thankfully the acting was good, Daniel Craig is great in the role and could go on to take Sean Connery's title of "Best Bond" in time, Olga Kurylenko did well enough as Camille and Gemma Arterton was sadly underused as Fields.
Overall it was a decent action film but a sub-par as a Bond film, I hope the next film has more plot to it, this one felt like the second unit director was in charge of procedures as the film lurched from one action scene to the next with little time in between to explain what is happening and why.