All action - which can be a bad thing

Rating: 3/10 (17 November 2008)

The movie was action packed. The stunt work was great. With CGI it's difficult to tell how much was real but it sure looked like there were people taking most of those bumps. There was a nice sort of tribute to "Goldfinger" in there with the manner of death of a woman Bonds meets and hops into bed with about 20 minutes after meeting her.
Those were the positives for me.
On the down side - I am sorry to say I didn't remember who was who from the last movie so I wasn't sure which people Bond was after due to the current movie plot and which were left over from the last movie. The main villain was kind of a shady business man. He wasn't interested in taking over the world or anything, just wanted to make money by taking over the water rights in 3rd world countries. He was connected some how to a larger group of shady business people. I don't think he will wind up ranking with the top Bond villains.
Bond hooks up with a woman who (I think) was in the Bolivian secret service but apparently was out on her own seeking revenge. She and Bond cross paths a few times but in the end he drops her off in some slum area of a city with no explanation, I guess she lived around there but that seemed a bit strange. The actress was good, looked great, but what the heck was going on there? The fight scenes were shot in the style where everything was made blurry fast by camera movement to the point where I had a hard time telling who was hitting who. At one time "steady cams" were a great improvement as they eliminated the jerky camera movements but it seems in this movie they intentionally went for an anti-steady cam look. I don't understand this style but this isn't the only movie doing things that way.
In the fights Bond seems to always get his gun kicked or knocked out of his hand at the beginning of the fight. I had to wonder why he didn't carry a backup piece or a knife or something since he had such a hard time holding onto his gun.
The climax takes place in a hotel built in the middle of know where that had tanks of easily pierced/exploding tanks of hydrogen scattered about. The secondary villain was an army general who the business people were going to turn into El Presidente with the agreement of the British and American governments. He was about to launch a coup but had just a couple of guys with him. At the time when the coup was about he take place he takes time out to try to rape a hotel waitress. I thought maybe he should be thinking about taking over the country first and raping later but apparently he wasn't taking a hands-on role in the overthrow of the government.
While Bond does kill off the 10 or so bad guys at the hotel there is nothing said about the rest of the organization that was supposed to be over throwing the government. So did that coup go on and another guy got made the new El Presidente or was the whole thing postponed? That was just left hanging. The business people still apparently had control of the countries water supply. Bond apparently blows town leaving the locals dying of thirst.
The CIA puts a kill on sight order on Bonds because he was going "rogue" trying to stop the overthrow of a government. Hasn't that been done before? In Die Another Day and License to Kill wasn't he going rogue in those too? How many times can they do that? You would think Bond would be getting fed up with his own people turning on him like that.
Bottom line is that I don't think I will watch this again even if I was given a free ticket. Once is enough. If you like mindless action you might find it enjoyable but if you are looking for a "James Bond" movie, this isn't it.