Bond, shames Bond  the review of Quantum of Solace

Rating: 6/10 (10 November 2008)

(Karthik Narayan)
When you see your first Bond movie in a theater, you naturally go with great expectations. Especially when a movie is hyped big time, and releases a good week before it releases in the US!
A typical Bond movie would have cheesy punch lines that would shame a Rajinikanth movie, romance scenes that would give Kamal Hassan second thoughts if he was growing old; not to forget the techno wiz and gadgets that would make NASA feel they were playing with toy balloons.
Being a sequel to Casino Royale, which many swear by as one of the best and most realistic Bond movies of all time, this movie started off with action sequences right from the word GO. All the action scenes were brilliantly choreographed; the visual imagery was mind boggling. Mind you, this is supposed to be a believable human Bond.
Here's a little something I typed in my mobile while watching the movie!!
With Daniel Craig brutally assaulting and killing people at will The movie was all about the licence to kill
And all through the movie we had this chill (Definitely not because of air conditioning) but because of the thrill
To get out of this movie halfway you had to summon your will Simply because you had already paid the entire bill!!
The only thing that made Bond yet again not so humane was that in spite of his cards getting blocked, his bills being unpaid and his movements being tracked, he always managed to get what he wanted and too easily. Also, without hi-tech gadgetry, Bond always manages to get to the low down and track the enemy. Maybe some things are best untold, but if the movie makers want to make Bond more believable, they need to make things normal rather than superhuman. But yes, there was the emotional Bond that made him human in this movie.
Bond girls and villains, however stole the show. I particularly enjoyed the role of Mathieu Amalric as Dominic Greene; his beady little eyes showed an array of emotions such as greed, lust and hatred in a beautiful sort of way. I would surely look out for more of his movies from now on, with a well toned body, good looks, he is good material for movies.
Olga Kurylenko doesn't have much to say except a few words now and then  her opening one-liner "get in" and at the end, when she says "get in" have good touches to it; other than that she isn't much. She has this resemblance to Catherine Zeta Jones (only slightly). Gemma Atherton is too cute and pretty and doesn't deserve the treatment she gets in the movie.
A hundred sms-es, a few inside jokes, buckets of drooling (Ananth, Samba and his friend were eyeing all the girls in the theater), and a few verses later, the movie finally came to an end.
Keeping in line with our usual habit, we did stay in the movie hall till the end of the credits  hoping to see something good to get our money's worth, but the sweepers of the theater were so annoying, they just popped in and asked us to vacate. So what's the big deal with credits?
As I walked to the parking lot, I asked my friend who had watched the movie with me, what does quantum of solace mean?
He shook his head at me and we never spoke a word after that about the movie. Somehow it didn't all bond
Rating: 6/10 (purely for action)