Act 2

Rating: 8/10 (14 November 2008)

This film needs to be treated as the second act of Casino Royale. The reason that it's being ripped into by critics and viewers alike is that for some reason they were expecting a stand alone Bond film - I keep hearing that this "is a good action flick but not a good Bond film". This is a direct sequel, something that has not been done in Bond before and therefore something that creates a different kind of finished product. In fact this is more of a continuation of Casino Royale than your average sequel, it really is the second act (of hopefully a solid three act story).
A few other notes: I enjoyed the directing in the non-action scenes, as well as the score. The opera scene was particularly awesome.
Heard a lot about the Bourne-style cuts during the action scenes and I agree that it is annoying at times. I had the same issue with some of the final fights in Dark Knight. But apparently that's the trend right now so I guess I'll have to deal. It doesn't severely detract from the overall experience.
I guess the best way to articulate my review here is to compare both Casino Royale and QOS to Man on Fire (2004). QOS is like the second part of that film when Denzel just goes off. True, it's a little weird the way that they decided to split up CR and QOS, and also the lack of much of a refresher in QOS, but maybe they were expecting a little more intellectual effort on the part of the viewer. Either way, just make sure you watch CR sometime prior to seeing QOS.