Mixes Old Bond With New Bond

Rating: 7/10 (15 December 2008)

This is the first immediate sequel to any Bond film, so it plays out differently. Here we start just after Casino Royale finishes. Bond questions Mr. White and discovers a secret organization known as Quantum, who have people everywhere. Bond must now go after Dominic Greene, another pawn in Quantum's schemes and this time Bond is fueled by revenge.
With every other Bond film, they were able to stand alone since they did not need to rely on the previous installments for someone to know what is going on. This time is different. QoS is the first direct sequel to any Bond film and this does both good and bad for the end results.
As I said before Craig is an excellent Bond, one of my favourites. He adds a new layer to a character who was getting boring with the same old same old. This time we see a more dangerous Bond, some might complain that he is starting to resemble Bourne more then Bond, but I don't really mind it too much. Casino Royale showed us where they wanted to take the series and QoS continues down that road, only it stumbles a bit.
For one, the action sequences. They are all good and fun, but poorly thrown together. I got a sense of this from the trailers and my thoughts were confirmed with seeing the opening sequence and rooftop chase. I would of liked a better set-up here, throwing us directly into the action is a mis-step. But, at the same time the action sequences screamed classic Bond, which is what was missing from Royale. Here we have the car chases, plane chases and boat chases. Everything seemed like they were updating the older films and it was neat. If they were better edited and directed then I would have enjoyed them more, instead I found myself desperately trying to follow what was going on.
The villain wasn't anything special. Mathieu Amalric does a good job with what he is given, but the character is boring, not evil enough and not once did I think this guy was dangerous. I find him to be like a little boy with too much power. Mr. White would have been a better villain, but it seems they are saving that for another time. Olga Kurylenko is beautiful and she looks like she can handle herself, but I wasn't too impressed here. I enjoyed Eva Green a lot more and wanted her back here. Not saying Kurylenko does a bad job, she just isn't that interesting to me.
Most of these problems aren't we the actors, but the script. It is muddled with problems in the plot and sometimes is hard to follow. There were a few unnecessary parts and characters, Mathis and Felix Leiter randomly show up and don't do anything of interest. I was disappointed and it seems the series may need a new writer or two to bring fresh and more importantly clear ideas for the next installment.
In the end this is a decent flick, it serves as a bridge to what I hope and think will be a better film down the road. It's basically the second half of Casino Royale as well. If you enjoyed Royale, you will like this one, but you won't be enthusiastic about it. I sure wasn't.