What's up with all the hype? slightly overrated?

Rating: 7/10 (4 December 2008)

Hi everybody!
This is my first comment posted here and its mainly because I was expecting something better.
Splitting up the movie in parts to comment:

Plot - Very intense start, continues from Casino Royale. Ending seemed unfinished.

Characters - Daniel Craig played Bond dark and crude as he should since the love of his life betrayed him and died. Olga Kurylenko's character followed a vengeful path, apparently similar to Bond going after the guy who made Vesper do what she did to him and die. Gemma Arterton's character was not on-screen for long and didn't seem to play much of a part in anything, other than sleep with Bond.

Camera angles - Bad. I think this is the first Bond movie this Director (Marc Forster) has ever directed. Movies which he previously directed were quite well done, such as Finding Neverland and Stranger Than Fiction, but I think this is a new genre for him. The car chase scene at the beginning was too fast and extremely close. I understand that it may be difficult to have long shots of car chase scenes in a tunnel but once the cars were outside the same super-fast and close angles were used. I know that fast and close angles intensifies the action atmosphere but what happens in Quantum of Solace is that it overdoes it and becomes uncomfortable. Not all the angles were bad. One of the best was the rooftop chase and where Bond and the other guy jumped through a glass ceiling and onto the construction platforms.

Setting - Nicely presented environment. The scene when Bond chased the other guy and fell through the glass ceiling and onto the construction platforms was very interesting. The suspended pulled and the mid-air fights were very nice.

Length - The length was fairly short for a Bond movie. I was expecting something around 2hr.

Layout - The layout of the movie was not that good since after the intense car chase at the beginning the action was uneven. The movie started off on a high at the beginning then there was the rooftop chase, but after that I looked at my watch and realised there was only ~20minutes left and hardly anything significant has happened.

Bond Stereotype - Bond didn't seem to say the "My name is Bond. James Bond." quote. Bond didn't sleep with Camille (Olga Kurylenko) in the end. Usually, if there are two girls and Bond sleeps with one of them at around the middle of the movie, that girl dies and at the ending of the movie Bond sleeps with the second girl. Its just an ongoing pattern throughout the ~20 Bond movies. Bond's drink, "Martini, shaken not stirred." was not used. Instead, the bartender explained what was in the drink like "3 measures of Gordon's Gin, 1 of Vodka, 1/2 measure of Konokunai which is not Vermouth shaken well until it is ice cold and then served with a large thin slice of lemon peel..". The bartender could have simply said at the end that it is a Martini. There isn't any introduction of any new gadgets, probably this is because it continues from Casino Royale. Plus Quantum of Solace is slanted towards a personal attack rather than a British Secret Service assignment. I don't know if any of these are absent because it was the way the story was written from the start by Ian Fleming.

Overall, Quantum of Solace has many elements that fit a Bond film but could have done much better.