CR started the move, and QoS confirms it: Craig's films are now not only tagged as "good Bond films", they can be simply tagged "good films", full stop.
Forster did an very good job on Qos, and the result is a classy, stylish film. The image is stunningly beautiful. Hence the "millesime" comment in the title of this thread: I really believe QoS will age beautifully.
The only thing I didn't like very much was the title sequence: too "vectorial" to my taste, if I may say so. The sandy silhouettes are a nice idea though, and I would have liked to have more of them.
I didn't feel the plot was that complicated, really. But the pace is indeed very fast: Bond never stops moving, from one side of the world to another.
There's a lot of action, also filmed very stylishly (I'm thinking specially about the Siena art gallery fight there), but I guess I'll have to watch the film again to get everything: sometimes it moves so fast you feel a bit lost. I was a bit disappointed that in the end Siena - and particularly the bottini - did not get a very long screen time (sorry, the city is my soft spot
), but seeing the unmistakable Siena skyline in a Bond film almost brought a tear to my eye! However, if the film as a whole is more classy, after watching it a first time I think there are less "iconic" and visually striking moments in QoS than in CR (like, say, Bond in trunks, the Aston Martin about to run over Vesper then rolling over, the sinking Venitian palace, or the crane fight). There's an interesting bit when Bond kills a henchman, whom he shouldn't have killed (but didn't know that). The script morally "covers" Bond since he doesn't "technically" kills the guy, who is finished off by a villain, but this episode reminded me of some discussions here about Bond having "unheroic" actions.
Amalric delivers a perfectly creepy performance as Dominic Greene, and the final confrontation with Bond is
(it is nicely intertwined with Camille's parallel fight with another character). I don't see the point of the silly hairpiece on Elvis's head (nor do I see the point of his silly name), but well... The film has some very nicely done references to the Bond universe. There is an obvious one (and very well done) to the Goldinger movie, but two things struck me as nods to the literary Bond. I may be wrong, but:
- the shot of a piece of jewelry in the snow reminded me very clearly of the cover of my OHMSS copy (a penguin book of the early 20s I think, with a wedding ring fallen in the snow surrounded by drops of blood). OK, this reference is not very clear, but the next is.
- there's one moment near the end, when Bond looks like he is exactly in the same situation as in LALD, when he decides that he'll drown Solitaire before she gets torn into pieces by the reefs and sharks, to offer her a better death.
The gunbarrel at the end almost gave me goose bumps!
