Quantum of Solace - Grading & Discussion

[Agent Richard07]

Welcome to the grading & discussion thread for Quantum of Solace.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***



QUANTUM OF SOLACE

In this sequel to the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale, Bond goes up against Dominic Greene, a member of a sinister organization, who intends to stage a coup d'état in Bolivia to take control of its water supply. Bond is also seeking revenge for the death of Vesper Lynd, and finds himself working with a woman named Camille, who wants to kill Greene. Quantum of Solace is due for release in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2008 and in North America on November 14th. - Various Internet Sources

• Official Site
• Trailers
• IMDb Entry
• Wikipedia Entry
• Rotten Tomatoes Page
• Box Office Mojo Page

[ncc74302]

I seem to recall JJ Abrams is on a tour overseas in late october.... any connection with the release of this movie? I think it was said at least in the states the Trek XI trailer was premiering with Quantum... so I bet that will be the case in the UK.

[Haggis and tatties]

I love that poster.......brilliant......gave me a chuckle.

[John Picard]

Haggis and Tatties wrote:

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I love that poster.......brilliant......gave me a chuckle.

Oh boy

[Haggis and tatties]

^^^

[TheMasterOfOrion]

a bit shitty its best and truest claim is that it ain't as bad as Die Another Day but in comparison to any of the great Bond movies this one is going to be a box office stinker. Miss Kurilenko looks bored, the script is terrible even Schwarzenegger could have delivered more wit, humor and charm

[Faldor]

what can I say? this film is a mess, I think the closest thing I can compare it too is the second Bourne film in the sense that the very thin plot is only pulled out when the awkwardly shot action needs a break.

what little I did make out of the plot, I quite liked but it was very thin. a lot of the film suffered from the kind of problems you get in amateur films, where cuts to new scenes just leave you asking where the action has moved too.

the worse offender is a scene in an airport which moves to an opera house which seemed to imply they were still in the same building. which didn't make much sense.

one of the most irritating things about the film was the style of the graphics, which had location subtitles designed to look part of the scene like when a shot looking down on a road with "London, England" as if it was painted on the road.

also there some Minority Report style computer interfaces, which went against what Casino Royale had set up as a more bare bones Bond.

I do like Daniel Craig's Bond, its the closest we've seen to Flemming's books and he puts in a good second performance.

Mathieu Amalric as Dominic Green is a much weaker character then Le Chiffre and I kind of got the feeling they didnt know where to draw the line between cheesy 80s megalomaniac Bond Villain and the more reserved villains of the earlier films.

whilst I felt disappointed, I can't in all honesty say I didn't enjoy the film, and in that respect I'd probably compare it to "The World Is Not Enough" In terms of recent Bond outings, It's not god awful, its a decent story lost in a lot of badly covered action, and a style that feels so modern it hurts.

[MyCylon]

Great poster .

[Tom Servo]

So a bit off topic...but to anyone who saw it already, was there a Trek XI trailer attached to it?

[Faldor]

No, but trailers are changed every week and depends which city / country you see it in.

[Sagart]

The film is a collection of very cool moments in search of a decent narrative. Bond and M come out of it best and their relationship is the real heart of the movie. If anything, there is too much action in the movie; the best scenes are the quiet ones, between Bond and Mathis on the plane, Bond and M, especially the final scene. A line can be drawn under the 'Bond becoming 007' storyline started in 'Casino Royale' and we can hopefully look forward to a more traditional, at least in narrative style, Bond movie and, dare we hope, we'll see some old favs like Q and Moneypenny.

Overall - 7/10

[Lonemagpie]

It's really the second half of the movie that started with the second half of Casino Royale (which itself feels like two movies in a double bill). It also did kind of give me a Tomorrow Never Dies vibe. Only, you know, better.

I loved it. Mind you, I watched Casino Royale (best Bond movie ever) last night, and so it did feel like a solid entity to me. I went in kind of worrying - I'd heard all sorts of spoilers in the other thread that suggested it would just be filler, but came out feeling that I'd seen a great Bond movie. Not the best Bond movie, and I'll get to the negative points shortly, but a worthy Bond fix all the same.

Casino Royale so perfectly rebooted the series, and was so well done in and of itself, that really, nothing was going to live up to the hype that the previous movie had generated. At least not without Martin Campbell back as director.

So, the good:

Craig is perfect as Bond; excellent villain; great score; Olga Kurylenko was good; Mathis and Felix were great - I really felt we were getting to explore more of how these people came to be Bond's friends; the relationship with M; the action scenes, great chases and fights. The usual. Also, it was nice to see a real globe-hopping Bond again, with the plotlines unfolding in exotic locations.

Some posters had said on the other thread that it doesn't really go into Bond's character development, post-Vesper. They must have seen a different movie, or at least not in effect watched it with CR as a double-bill (and my advice is definitely to rewatch CR immediately beforehand. Standalone, this would rate a 7.5 or so, like TND, but together they're greater than the sum of their parts).

The main plot is actually pretty simplistic and very Moore-era - or indeed TND again, as it's all about trying to grab commodity rights - but the elements of what's driving Bond (revenge for Vesper? Or for M?) are much more subtly handled and brilliantly played. Yes, this does conclude things for the Vesper/betrayal thing, outright and explicitly, but just not sledgehammered in dialogue. It ends nicely, with the necklace, and with enough closure for Greene and company, but with the knowledge that Quantum, like SPECTRE in the old days, can come back anytime, but without making it actually necessary or dictating how they do.

There always used to be a running gag that Bond movies were always 20 minutes too long. Well, this time they left out the extra 20, and you don't feel short changed. It's just the right length. There are all manner of great little touches too, like the little discs going across in the titles presaging the gunbarrel (like how the white disc offers up Broccoli and Saltzman's names in OHMSS). It's a proper gunbarrel this time, though.

The not-so-good.
Well, the song still sucks, and doesn't really play any better over the titles. I'm unsure about the titles - I don't like the font used, which reminds me of late 1970s literary SF covers. Also, I'd really have put the gunbarrel at the start, not for form's sake but because a) it would have worked perfectly well at the beginning - just drop the long sweep in over the lake and there's a perfect shot of the Aston coming right at you that would have blended perfectly! and b) The end credits would have come up over the necklace in the snow - very poignant and reminiscent, thematically, of the last shot of OHMSS

For the first half-hour, the action scenes are not so well handled by Forster, and made me wonder if he was the right guy to helm it - aside from the overly-brief cuts detracting from the excellent choreography, there are some weird choices of framing. E.g.when Bond yanks the starter of a speedboat engine, we get a quick close-up not of his hand or the engine starting, but the knee of his trousers. WTF? However, it gets better after that!

Overall, though, I thought it was a thrilling, pulse-pounding ride with great performances (except for Gemma Arterton), lovely character moments, subtle wit (so subtle a lot of critics don't seem to have registered it!), and a believable journey for Bond's coming to terms with Vesper's death and what his lifestyle means.

I'm in two minds about the location-captions.

So, a rating?

Excellent

[Pat]

A very enjoyable movie despite the negative reviews. Very derivative and heavily influenced by Bourne though.

[TedShatner10]

I'd say the editing was distracting in some places, while with the action scenes they should've pulled the camera out a bit and kept it level, but overall Quantum of Solace was not disappointing for the most part but struggles a bit as a stand alone. I even liked the slightly brisk running time and QoS didn't outstay it's welcome like Casino Royale was verging on being by the time they hit Venice.

The plot is not so bad if you look at it as a piece of a much larger puzzle and Quantum is a much more dangerous hydra than imagined if it has members and friends in very high places, while systematically infiltrating NATO governments and agencies. Here's what we've learned of them so-far:

Mr. White escapes and is still at large, a high ranking member of the British government (played by Tim Pigott-Smith) is part of this syndicate, Quantum has corporate fronts everywhere, Vesper's boyfriend was a Quantum operative all along, and Quantum leaders seem to hold summits at lavish operas in plain sight (they're horizontal and decentralized, as I suspected).

[Emher]

I saw at the opening here in Sweden, and I'm glad to hear that it wasn't just me who was a bit tired that made it seem to move very quickly. I'd rate it Above Average, with Casino Royale being rated Excellent because Quantum of Solace, while very good, just doesn't have the depth of CS. And that's perfectly fine, I think it finished Bond's personal storyline that started in CS and made us get to know a biiiit more about the evil organisation. And I liked the intro and thought the song was decent.

Someone said about the Bond girls that the Gemma Aterton steals the show from Olga Kurylenko (sp?) and I'd have to agree to some level but I think Olga was decent enough (except for driving a bloody Ford Ka ).

As for the bad, I'd agree with that it moves to quickly. I think the film could have benifited from being about 10-15 minutes longer just by not having so fast cuts, especially in action sequences. I feel it's somehow because the film has two editors (in comparison to one great one on Casino Royale, Stuart Baird), as if one of them is a really great editor and the other one is either really terrible or was hired to trim the movie down. There were bits like the opening shots and the quick flashes of parts of cars and bullets that where brilliant but several times I just felt everything went a bit to quick. Not bad enough to spoil the movie for me though.

Also when will we get a proper car chase in Bond movies again! The openbing chase is great but waaaaay too short.

In conclusion I'd just like to say Craig is still fantastic as Bond and I hope he stays on for several more films. And I'll be seeing this at least once again theatres, while a bit more awake