It's just not Bond.

Rating: 4/10 (31 December 2008)

How did they get it so wrong? Bond is a franchise- and like any franchise there are certain expectations that have to be honoured for the franchise to work. With Macdonalds it is a particular range of burgers prepared in a particular way, with Bond it is exotic locations, beautiful women, exotic villains, complex scripts, engaging and humorous character interactions, solid character development and spectacularly vivid and clear action sequences. Unfortunately, Quantum of Solace misses more than it hits with these expectations.
The exotic locations are there, but the camera doesn't linger long enough on any of them for us to appreciate and enjoy them (or even, on occasion, recognize them). The beautiful women are there but Bond is too preoccupied with his grief for the recently departed Vesper, and the camera is too preoccupied with sustaining the frenetic pace of the story for either Bond or us to enjoy them. The villains are exotic enough, but they are all given too little film time for us to truly despise them. The script is suitably complex and engaging but the speed of the central action fails to allow us the time to adequately process the information so we can follow it.
The humorous character interactions and the solid character development are sadly lacking. Bond and M (because of our understanding of their relationship as developed in Casino Royale) make the most of their moments on screen, but the other characters don't have that history and consequently the time to develop our interest in them.
The most disappointing aspect, however, is the filming style of the action sequences. Even the clumsiest films of the franchise have clear and spectacular action sequences. This is the one element in all of the films that never requires explanation or intellectual interpretation to know what's going on  not so in Quantum of Solace. The action sequences are so disjointed and jumpy as to leave the audience totally confused. It appears that the director is so determined to give us the experience of the action from Bond's perspective that if Bond doesn't see it  neither do we. Consequently most of the traditional climaxes to the action sequences are missing, leaving the audience to surmise what just happened.
Marc Forster, obviously doesn't understand the Bond franchise. Unlike any other movie series ever created, Bond depends on certain formulaic elements to be a Bond film  to stray from them is to deny what the Bond film should be  exhilarating, sexy, fun, escapist entertainment. Forster seems to have tried to write his own signature on this film - creating a dry, gritty, fast but ultimately dull experience.
Perhaps the Producers, seeing the error of their ways, may see fit to re-edit the film for DVD distribution so that we get a fuller more entertaining version of the characters and the action  but I'm not holding my breath. Lets hope, at least, that they have the good sense to return to the formula that made the series so spectacularly successful in the first place with Bond 23, otherwise this is one aficionado who will not be hanging around for Bond 24.