"The name's Bo-" NO! We're still not doing that.

Rating: 6/10 (9 November 2008)

Well this is disappointing. Despite Quantum of Solace's best interests, it has fallen into that "Revamp the James Bond series by introducing a new actor and placing emphasis on realism but only for one film before reverting back to the previous ostentatious formula that the majority of Bond films employ even though nobody, except morons, wants this to happen." Therefore, QoS is heavy on explosions, vehicle chases, one-dimensional megalomaniacs and things that would never happen, and light on plot, characters and most of the qualities that made Casino Royale such a success.
Quantum of Solace picks up mere hours after Casino Royale left off, and director Marc Forster immediately foists a badly executed car chase onto the audience. It is like he is basically saying "Seriously, it is going to be variations on this for 104 minutes. Transformers is my favourite film." Forster seems to have graduated from the Bourne trilogy school of directing, which means audiences have to pay fastidious attention in order to discern any concrete happenings from the shaky cameras filming it. There's action going on there, sure, but we cannot see it.
Following the car chase, serious Daniel Craig Bond flies to several destinations around the world (whose names are announced every time in a variety of different fonts and colours, which makes it look like the Powerpoint presentation of a twelve year old), shoots people without hesitation to show the audience how emotionally detached he is, saves a girl for no reason who by the law of film coincidence turns out to be the centre point of what little story there is and finally ends up in a trademark explosive house in the middle of nowhere filled with nothing but catwalks, propane tanks and bad guys. At many points it is difficult to know or care why Bond is going to Russia or London or Germany and Forster's lame attempts to misdirect the audience with yet another close up of Bond's face after he disarms and kills somebody within 3 seconds does nothing to appease this confusion. The political ambiguity and underhandedness between the USA and UK is perhaps the only aspect of the story that works, although the implications are never properly explored as that would be making some sort of statement and may offend at least four or five people.
Daniel Craig plays Bond like he did in Casino Royale; it worked then because there was an underlying humour to many of his lines. This time around, the scriptwriters evidently decided time spent being funny and cool could be spent not talking and killing instead. He is still the best person in the world ever to wear a tuxedo though. Bond girl Olga Kurylenko makes about as much impact as she did in Hit-man, which is none at all, although she does get thrown head first through a glass table and shakes it off like it was a minor irritation. Fish-eyed Mathieu Amalric on the other hand, who plays evil genius Dominic Greene, is instantly memorable as the Bond villain whose mêlée fighting abilities include unintentionally hilarious screaming. He sounds like Björk.
Minor characters are killed almost as quickly as they are introduced. One is Gemma Arterton, who plays Agent Fields, sent to bring Bond back to London but sleeps with him instead (obviously) and then, in a clumsy nod to Goldfinger, is killed after being drowned in oil. KthxFieldsbi! Another is Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini), whose death makes Bond seem callous and unlikeable. Finally, Jeffrey Wright, one of the most versatile and engaging actors around, is criminally underused as Felix Leiter. He is reduced to "man with beard sitting around glowering at everybody" and when he finally gets to say something it is overshadowed by, surprise, Bond being chased.
Quantum of Solace is by no means terrible but utterly fails to scale the heights of intelligence and enjoyment that Casino Royale reached in 2006 and, though Bond argues "You don't have to worry about me", the seeds of doubt in the Bond franchise have once again been sown.