Quantum of Solace - Or How To Make A Complete Mess Out of Something Basically Very Simple

Rating: 3/10 (5 April 2009)

After the Bond franchise was successfully reinvented with the very watchable Casino Royale, it immediately kills itself off again in with the eminently UNwatchable Quantum of Solace, aka how to make a complete mess out of something basically very simple Let me be clear: I like most of the old Bond Stuff...sure it was cheesy and goofy, but it was good fun. Over time though, it got progressively worse with the also unwatchable Die Another Day as the low point. Then Casino Royale came along and although it was a lot more serious than previous outings, it still had style and class, and even had character development and a story.
Now, Quantum of Solace comes along, and not only does it throw out everything that made the old Bond movies fun (style, humor) it also throws out everything that made CR fun. What we are left with is a third rate Jason Bourne that seems to be played on double speed.
At the basis, the ingredients for a good Bond movie are here; the story is serviceable, the exotic locations and girls are there, and there are some essentially excellent action sequences.
Whatever potential there is, however, is totally spoiled by the fact that the entire movie from start to finish is incredibly rushed. The action sequences are edited in such a haphazard and frantic way that it's impossible to determine what on earth is going on.
The plot is rushed in a similar way; we jump from one location to the next with no explanation whatsoever, characters pop out of nowhere and are killed off before we even learn their names, and in general everything feels very random. If you try a bit you can still distill a decent story out of this mess, but frankly half of it seems to have gone missing on the editing room floor, along with basically all of the character development.
In the end this is simple a horrible movie to watch. It could have been decent but the horrible editing and incredibly poor storytelling drag it down to the "unwatchable mess" level.
Final note: I am undecided about whether this is the worse Bond yet, I think Die Another Day was a little bit worse. But at least this one takes over from that movie for having the worst title song..something I found almost impossible