Should be a HELLUVA lot better

Rating: 5/10 (27 November 2008)

It's wrong to ask for a sequel to be as good as the first, in this case being Casino Royale, but they had so much to work with! I blame this all on this horrendous director, with his fast-paced "let's have a blast and edit every scene to half a second" directing. It's hard to follow much. All I keep reading about it is that they wanted to break away from Casino Royale and make something "different". By different, they didn't mean bad. Yeah, yeah box office numbers say one thing, but I went DESPITE my friend saying it doesn't compare to the first. I would not be surprised to find out that's why people went to this one, saying "How can you kill such a great character and plot?" Of course Daniel Craig did all he could to make it work and lots of kudos to him, but it wasn't enough. I'll stop reminiscing, but this movie is just not what people will expect. Period. If I want a ambiguous plot and pretty bad action scenes, I'll watch XXX. At lease there they don't pretend to be something else. Casino Royale did something that many people will love it for, which is treading on the thin line between a smart and great plot and action. Flipping the DBS in almost 10 seconds and making it work AMAZINGLY with the plot? Kudos to Haggis.