8 replies to this topic

[tdalton]

Having just gotten back from seeing Quantum of Solace, I have to say that I found the film to be a very interesting entry into the Bond franchise. I say that mainly because it's so very different from anything that we've seen from the 21 films that preceded it that it's really very difficult to try to compare it to many of the previous entries. It's this different, I think, that is both the strength and weakness of the film.

First of all, Daniel Craig is fantastic, and may have even turned in a better performance as Bond in this film than he did in Casino Royale. I can now say without hesitation that Daniel Craig is my favorite Bond of them all. I wanted to wait to see if he could at least match his work in Casino Royale before making that claim, but I really do now feel that he's the best we've seen in the role. In this one, he finally portrayed the Bond that I imagine when I read the Fleming novels. He's a very cold character in this one in a way that we haven't really seen before (although we saw hints of it in Casino Royale). Hopefully EON doesn't make us wait three years for the next film as I'm very much hoping that they'll make as many films as is possible with Craig in the role.

As with Casino Royale, I found the acting in this film to be quite good, and a large step above what we generally see in the franchise. In just the past two films, I think that we've seen perhaps three of the better Bond girls in the franchise. Eva Green's Vesper is probably my favorite Bond girl of them all, but I have to say that I think Olga Kurylenko's Camille is right up there with her on the scale. Of all the times that EON has tried to go the route of having the Bond girl be more or less another James Bond-type character in the film, this is the first time that they've really gotten it right. Kurylenko is fantastic in this film, to say the least, and her exchanges with Bond are amongst my favorite in the franchise. The two times that she tells Bond to get in the car with her are fantastic exchanges between the two actors. Their first meeting was one of my favorite humorous moments in the franchise in quite a while ("Get in." "Alright").

I also thought that Gemma Arterton was quite good in her very limited role as Fields. I would have liked to have seen her get significantly more screen time as I thought that her character was quite good, and a very good change of pace from the types of characters that we usually see in a Bond film. I was very wary of the Goldfinger homage going into the film, but I thought that it was done extremely well, and Bond's reaction to it was quite good and was one of the better moments of the film when he passes by M on his way out of the hotel and tells her to make note of Fields' valor in her report.

Aside from the acting, however, I did find that there were a good number of flaws in the film that really did detract a great deal from the overall experience. There is no doubt that Marc Forster is a very talented director, and he'll probably go on to win a few Academy Awards over the course of his career, but the handling of the action in this film isn't that great. The car chase that opens the film, which was a scene that I was very much looking forward to, was not handled well at all, and the editing in that particular stretch of film was just terrible. I was trying my best to keep up with all of the quick cuts in the editing that were made and was trying my best to keep up with everything that was going on in the chase, but didn't have much luck with that. With that said, the introduction to the chase was superb, with the opening shot of the film and the quick shots of the exterior of the Aston Martin and of Craig as he is driving before the audience is thrust into the middle of the chase. I think that steadier camerawork, or just better editing, would have gone a long way towards making this sequence much better. The same could be said for just about every other action sequence in the film, but those were easier for me to follow simply because after the car chase and the opening moments of the sequence in which Bond is chasing Mitchell, I had gotten used to the style and accepted that it was going to be that way throughout the film.

On the plus side with Forster, however, were the artistic touches that he brought to the film. The moments immediately following Bond's breaking-up of the Quantum meeting at the opera are amongst the very best in franchise history. Bond meeting Greene and his entourage at the bottom of the stairs as the music dramatically swells up and the ensuing shootout interwoven with shots of the opera itself were truly spectacular, and that actually might be my favorite action sequence in the franchise. That moment was just simply fantastic, and it was really great because it played completely against my expectations of how action in a Bond film (and even how the action in this film had been handled up until that point) is usually handled. This moment, along with the scene following the free-fall stunt where Bond and Camille discuss their mutual desire for revenge and how Greene fits into all of it is another one of my favorite scenes in franchise history.

As for the action in this film, I don't think that anyone's going to be surprised when I say that I could have done without a lot of it. Actually, I could have done without most of it. The car chase wasn't particular good, but I attribute that more to the way it was shot (or edited) than to the actual content of the scene. The boat chase and plane chases, however, I really could have done without, and I would have much rather seen some more scenes such as the ones I described earlier in the review in lieu of these two action scenes. The final assault on the eco-hotel at the end was, however, very well done, and I especially liked Bond's fight with Greene.

Now, I couldn't end a review of this film without mentioning the song. I still don't like it very much at all, but it did work fairly well with the titles created by MK12. I don't really know how I'll feel about the title designs in the future when I see the film again on its DVD release, but based on one viewing I thought that they were pretty well done, and it was nice to see a completely different approach to the title sequence as opposed to the more-or-less unchanged approach we've seen the past 19 or so films.

Overall, I thought that the film was quite good, but I'm not really ready to rate it against Casino Royale, as I'm not really sure where it stacks up against that film or against the rest of them. It really is quite different from the rest of the films (mostly in a good way) to compare them based on just one viewing. I did, however, leave the theater thinking that the film was quite good, which was a significantly better reaction to it than I thought I was going to have.

[Tarl_Cabot]

Great review TD. Glad you liked it. I certainly did.

[kneelbeforezod]

Excellent review, and more or less mirrors my feelings on the film. Whatever its flaws, I can forgive a lot simply because they tried something different. I think this film will gain quite a following over time.

[tdalton]

Excellent review, and more or less mirrors my feelings on the film. Whatever its flaws, I can forgive a lot simply because they tried something different. I think this film will gain quite a following over time.

Thanks.

Definitely agreed on the film's flaws, they're much easier to forgive just because of the fact that they were trying to do something new. I still really do wish that the editing had been better, because just about all of the car chase and the rooftop chase were very difficult to follow because of the camera movements and the editing. But, I felt as though the other parts of the film made up for this, especially Bond's final confrontation with Greene, which was great and a much more satisfying way of dealing with the villain than just having Bond do away with him in a more traditional way that we've seen countless times before in the franchise.

[HH007]

Wow, considering I was expecting you to hate this one, I found your review to be a pleasant surprise. And I actually agree with most of it.

[tdalton]

Wow, considering I was expecting you to hate this one, I found your review to be a pleasant surprise. And I actually agree with most of it.

I'll admit, it did start out "slow" (in terms of my liking it), but once it got to the opera things really picked up. Much like CR, I'm not really a fan of the early parts of the film (especially the scene with Slate), but the rest of it was quite good.

Edited by tdalton, 16 November 2008 - 10:31 PM.

[tdalton]

After now having seen the film twice on Blu-ray, I'm going to give this one another review.


For me, Quantum of Solace is THE best film in the franchise. Yes, I think that highly of the film. What makes it great is that it manages to be many different things at once. On the one hand, it's a great throwback to some of the earlier Bond films in terms of its style, films such as Dr. No and From Russia With Love as examples. But it also manages to be something that is current as well, and something that is very much a product of the times that we live in now, which adds up to a great blend of things that have made the franchise great up to this point and that will continue to make the franchise great in the years to come.

The best way to start off a review of Quantum of Solace is to comment on the superb performance by Daniel Craig. I've said it in other threads prior to this review, but Daniel Craig is THE best Bond of the six. As much as I like the others (and I never thought that the day would come that I did not consider Timothy Dalton to be the best Bond), Daniel Craig simply stands head and shoulders above as the best of the bunch. That is in no way meant as a criticism or a knock against the other five, who are all very good, but it is meant more as a comment to say just how great Daniel Craig is in the role that he could exceed what his predecessors had done in the previous 20 films with just 2 of his own under his belt. The Bond that Craig displays here is one that is, for only the second time in the franchise (the other time being Casino Royale) a dynamic character that evolves as the picture progresses. When we catch up with Bond at the beginning of the film, he's angry, emotionally shut-off, and well on his way to becoming something closer to the original cinematic version of Bond. The journey that Bond takes in this film is one that helps him fully realize "the big picture" that M was trying to get him to come around to seeing throughout the duration of Casino Royale, and by the end of the film we have Craig as a fairly well-rounded agent who clearly sees "the big picture" and is a very effective spy in the field. What makes this journey for the character interesting to watch is the work done by Daniel Craig to make Bond a believable human being, rather than the indestructible superhero Bond had become by the time the previous series of Bond films was nearing a close.

As for the film itself, in my previous review at the top of this thread I said that the first half of the movie left me as unenthusiastic as the first half of Casino Royale did. I have changed my stance on this, however. The first half of Quantum of Solace is fantastic. I found the action in this film to be much better than that in Casino Royale. My complaints about the editing of the action sequences still stand in terms of the theatrical presentation of the film, but for whatever reason, it's much easier to follow during a home viewing of the film. The action sequences, while the same was in the theater, are just easier to follow on a smaller screen for whatever reason. I don't know why, but I just found myself easier to follow than I was able to in the theater. As for the action itself, I found it to be much more inspired and interesting than the action in Casino Royale. I really like the underground/rooftop chase between Bond and Mitchell, whereas I wasn't a huge fan of the free-running sequence in CR. Part of it, I feel, had to do with location, as Siena is a much more photogenic place than a construction yard, as well as the fact that this sequence was much more believable in a real world sense than Bond storming into an embassy, which, as M points out in that film, is a big mistake on Bond's part. The boat chase also comes off better on the small screen as well.

To highlight every instance of the film that I liked would take a great deal of time, as there really is not much in the film that I felt didn't work. The only negative about the film would be the dogfight/free-fall sequence, but even that came off a bit better on the small screen. It's still a scene that I would have scrapped in favor of more dialogue or more dramatic scenes, but it's not as bad as I remember it being in the theater.

The shootout at the opera continues to be one of my favorite moments in the entire franchise, and there really just isn't much about the film that I would change. For me, it's honestly THAT good, and I would go as far as to say that Quantum of Solace is to this new series of Bond films what From Russia With Love was to the last series of films. Aside from both being the second film of their respective series (just to note, I consider CR to be the start of a different series of Bond films), but they're also of the highest quality and really expand upon what came before them. Hopefully Bond 23 will be even better than Quantum of Solace, but that's going to be a tall hurdle to jump over as QoS is, for me, the best of the 22 films in the franchise.

[byline]

Wow. Amazing review. And isn't it amazing that, all these viewings later, you're coming to a different appreciation of the film? That actually happened for me in the theatre, and yet it happened yet again when I watched it today on DVD. My favorite moment? That cat-like hop Bond does over the railing after meeting M in the hallway at the hotel. That's just one of those great . . . well, moments. And yes, Craig is extraordinary. Every time I watch "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace," I gain a new appreciation for what he's done with the role.

[tdalton]

Wow. Amazing review. And isn't it amazing that, all these viewings later, you're coming to a different appreciation of the film? That actually happened for me in the theatre, and yet it happened yet again when I watched it today on DVD. My favorite moment? That cat-like hop Bond does over the railing after meeting M in the hallway at the hotel. That's just one of those great . . . well, moments. And yes, Craig is extraordinary. Every time I watch "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace," I gain a new appreciation for what he's done with the role.

I've found that Quantum of Solace is a film filled with many great moments, like the one you mentioned here. One of my favorites is Bond's joke when checking into the nicer hotel after leaving the one that Fields wanted to stay in. I thought that it was a brilliant piece of writing, and one of the funniest jokes in the entire franchise. I also really like the second shot of Bond while he's holding Greene by the hair, deciding whether to drop him or to help him up. I don't know why, but that shot is just awesome, and Craig looks especially Bondian in that shot.