The flashes of the Aston Martin trademarks tell us immediately whose car we're seeing, then the steely cold eyes.
While I love the opening over-the-water shot and some of the other shots (the close-up of Craig's eye, for one), I don't like the shots of the car itself. They scream "car commercial."
But overall, I agree about the opening car chase. While somewhat extraneous to the story (nothing new for a PTS, of course), it's a thrilling opening that absolutely rocks. It might not rock quite as much as it could have, if you ask me, but it's a thrilling sequence that knocks the wind out of most of its competition in the franchise, and remains one of the highlights of QUANTUM OF SOLACE.
I'm really taken with its complete short-story narrative at the moment, and just how quickly it's clearly told. Of course, all the pre-title sequences have been little self-contained prologues of their own, but I feel like this one does a particularly fine job of being its own little short story, if you will.
The Story:
Opening shot of Garda - Our setting
Closeup shots of Aston Martin and steely blue eyes - Our hero
Shots of bullets being loaded into machine guns - Our villains
The exposition is really that simple. All of it is given to us before the sound even kicks in. Schaefer gets a hug from me for that.
CHASE!! - Bond outruns the villains, a simple premise given to us with a dizzying ferocity that analogizes the hero's frenetic state of mind. Police are killed in the process, upping the stakes, and the chase ends as abruptly as it began.
Rising panorama of Siena - The hero's safe arrival to his destination. He has won his battle.
Closing twist - The hero had a villain in his trunk the whole time! We understand why the other villains were giving chase. And the hero is made doubly cool.
The End.
And yet, The Beginning of the larger story.
And all in four minutes.