Craig Stars as Film Dwindles

Rating: 7/10 (9 November 2008)

The massive success of "Casino Royale" created a weight of expectation on "Quantum of Solace" which was always going to be hard to live up to. The gritty and intense redesign of the Bond franchise, with the excellent Daniel Craig in the lead, gave rise to these great hopes and the signs were, on the whole, good. Nevertheless, one cannot help but be disappointed by Bond's latest outing, though it is by no means a disaster and still worth going to see.
"Quantum of Solace" is a film of two halves in many ways and it seems necessary to separate the good from the bad. Starting with the good, we have Daniel Craig continuing his fine work with the role. When the film comes to its end there can be no doubt that Craig is a man of awesome talent and the best Bond since Connery, if not the best. He is ably supported by the cast which includes brilliant turns from Olga Kurylenko (as the tough and interesting Camille), Giancarlo Giannini (reprising his role as Mathis) and Judi Dench (ever-excellent as M).
Then, there is the style of the film. One sequence, set around an Opera, is wonderful to watch and quite entrancing to look at. Other moments are also terrifically intense, whilst David Arnold provides an exemplary score to accompany the often impressive images.
Also, there is a continuation of the plot from "Casino Royale" which is not perhaps as heavily explored as it should be but still provides the film with its finest moment as it reaches its denouement. All of which bodes well for Craig's third outing, but cannot make up for some of this film's failings.
Most of the problems lie in the script which, whilst dryly funny and not without merit, has a plot (the one specific to this film) which is dull and overly reliant on action sequences. Poor Mathieu Almaric, who is his usual excellent self in this film, is lumbered with one of the most boring Bond villains in history and the central plot, though realistic and relevant, is hardly the most entertaining of ideas. A sign of its weakness is that, although this is the shortest Bond film on record, it feels long.
Furthermore, Bond's character development through the film is sporadic, and, for a film which relies so heavily on action, it does a lot of the chase and fight scenes really badly. It is often difficult to tell what's going on during the sequences and sometimes they are horrendously overlong. Marc Forster, who is often a great character filmmaker, is pretty much out of his depth here.
The film was badly affected by the writer's strike and there was not really an opportunity for it to be given the amount of work it deserved. Yes it is a disappointment, but it is not a regrettable experience or a disaster. It has its moments. The overwhelming experience is of a missed opportunity. This could have been so much more. Go and see it for Craig's performance, and in preparation for the next film which, with the greater amount of time available to the producers and writers, promises to be better.
3(1/2) stars out of 5