QUANTUM OF SOLACE - Shortest Bond Ever

[JSWalsh]

TWINE isn't terrible, exactly, but it's very, very bland. What kind of 007 movie climaxes with him and the baddie kicking each other in a cramped, flooding submarine control room?

LOL! That was the last Bond I saw in a theater, under protest with a friend who loves Bond movies.

As horrible as it was, I can't complain about Denise Richards. She's fun to look at--what the heck else do you want in a popcorn movie? She's not believable as a scientist? Look, Bond--any Bond--isn't believable as a spy.

[JSWalsh]

Except, of course, Jeff Bond. I once saw him kill a man with a moldy hamburger bun.

[mkaroly]

I thought the Elektra character in TWINE was outstanding- she made the movie for me....she should have been the villain. I agree that with DAD the villain was better, but TWINE really missed an opportunity.

At any rate, the one-two punch of Denise Richards and Halle Berry spoiled the latter Brosnan films for me.

[Eric Paddon]

Okay, now I watched this one. And boy, it doesn't do me pleasure to realize my instincts without seeing it a decade ago were right but if "Casino Royale" managed to validate my objections while still coming off as more "eh" then bad to me, this movie was simply put the WORST Bond movie I have ever seen. So bad it makes me want to take back a lot of the nasty things I have said about "Licence To Kill" over the years but at the same time, I can't quite do that because this film is basically LTK on steroids. A dark humorless muddled "revenge" film that is absolutely beyond INCOMPREHENSIBLE in terms of its plot and the stakes. When I have to read a Wikipedia summary AFTER the film to get some clarity that's when I know I've been bored to death even though I tried so hard to follow what was going on. Instead I got served up one boring cartoony action sequence after another with little to no organic context from the script (I thought the silly foot chase in "Casino" was bad enough. The one at the start of this film was even worse!) and a series of actors who are devoid of charisma on all levels (frankly give me Densie and Halle any day over any of these alleged Bond girls I've seen in Craig's films). Throwing in an unsubtle ripoff of "Goldfinger's" iconic scene for a character who never seemed to fit into the story just offered me a reminder that in two films the 007 franchise had reached its absolute nadir.

I am going to watch the other two films just to see how things went further because obviously I am well aware that we were given dangling plot elements that carried over into the next two films (a BAD idea on all levels) so I'll see if they learned from their mistakes but honestly I'm seeing every instinct I had a decade ago when I said I wasn't going to waste my time going to the theater vindicated.

[AndyDursin]

That's pretty much how I felt about it! Skyfall ain't perfect but it's a hell of a lot more entertaining.

[Eric Paddon]

One other thing about the muddled aspects of both films. When I watched "Casino Royale" I could have sworn Mathis was being shot dead in his last scene. The dialogue didn't suggest he was merely being apprehended. So imagine my mild surprise to see him rather unnecessarily brought back for "Quantum". If the scene in "Casino" was not meant to show Mathis being killed, then chalk up another point for the muddled storytelling that proliferates so many films in general in modern times (I yearn for the days when you could hear actors recite their lines clearly).

[Monterey Jack]

A big part of the reason why Quantum is so incomprehensible is that it was produced during the 2008 writer's strike, so the film was basically constructed of nothing more than action sequences with the barest minimum of connective tissue holding them together. And since Marc Forster is NOT a seasoned action filmmaker, even the action in the film sucks, with an overuse of "trendy" shakey-cam choreography that has already dated the film terribly. Say what you will about John Glen, but he at least worked his was slowly up the ladder of the Bond franchise in the 70's before getting a crack at directing in the 80's, and he knew how to construct action sequences that were crisp, efficient and COMPREHENSIBLE. No matter what Timothy Dalton detractors say about Licence To Kill, the final truck chase sequence is some of the best action filmmaking of the entire 007 series...really impressive work, all the more so for being done almost entirely full-scale. In fact, mediocre Michael Kamen score aside, LTK is horribly underrated amongst series fans...Dalton was Craig's "gritty, realistic" 007 two decades early, but no one gave a crap at the time because he was coming on the heels of Roger Moore's slack, jokey take on the character that people had come to expect by the mid-80's. Both LTK and The Living Daylights are pretty high on my list of favorite 007 movies...one only wishes that John Barry could have scored LTK, were it not for his health woes at the time.

Plus, it has one of my favorite villain lines in a Bond movie. "Don't worry...we give her a nice, honeymooooooooooooooooooooon."

[Eric Paddon]

I always liked how Glen helmed "Octopussy". (My favorite Moore Bond film)

I'll settle down to "Skyfall" soon (and bump the first "fresh" thread there was about that one).

[Paul MacLean]

DAD is the WORST...BOND...EVER.

It's down there, but I still think Goldeneye and Day Another Day are worse.

Quantum of Solace did at least have Olga Kurylenko...

[Eric Paddon]

I wasn't impressed by her at all. The whole business of her own little revenge angle was muddled and extraneous.

[AndyDursin]

The entire development of Bond in these 4 films is very unsatisfying. The connective tissue with CR is never fully explored, and Bond goes from being a newbie to an elderly vet by the end of SPECTRE, none too convincingly. It's like they really weren't sure where they were going from film to film, so although there's this vague sense of a running storyline, and an effort to portray 007 in a certain way, it's not satisfyingly articulated, much less resolved (though the end of SPECTRE is pretty damned finite, lol). Instead of development, there's repetition.

That's probably why the Bond films have historically been standalone episodes -- and function better on repeat viewing because of that. Years from now someone could drop into QUANTUM OF SOLACE and not understand at all the references to CASINO ROYALE -- they are convoluted enough just having watched it within a recent time frame, as Eric points out!

It's one of the failings of the Craig pictures, two of which are just fine, two of which are basically crap -- but they don't function as a whole in any event. If you run them all together like Eric is doing, it's even more obvious how unsuccessful they were in their (half hearted) attempts to produce a running story.

Frankly give me Densie and Halle any day over any of these alleged Bond girls I've seen in Craig's films

Craig's a bruiser of a Bond, not a lover. SKYFALL basically doesn't even have a female lead!

I agree with you on this also. But I also like two-thirds of DIE ANOTHER DAY, which is brought up here over and over for some reason. I don't think we can have a Bond thread without someone mentioning that one.

Unlike DIE ANOTHER DAY, there's essentially nothing in QUANTUM OF SOLACE that would make me ever want to watch it a second time. I feel the same way about that as I do MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, which is IMO the most pitiful by far of the Moore movies. I have a hard time getting through that one, it's so tired and not even interestingly shot (yes I would rather watch A VIEW TO A KILL again). From the terrible theme song on down, it's painful. No wonder they took an extra year off to get their act together before producing SPY WHO LOVED ME.

[mkaroly]

I wish the film was about 30 minutes longer which would have given them time to flesh out the story more. I like Craig's Bond a lot...I like Bond angry, violent, cold, and on edge. If the Craig films were meant to be Bond at his start, then he had to have gone through a process of working through his emotions and honing his killer instincts. That is why I like the Craig films so much because I see that arc developing. The scene with the girl in QoS when they reach the compound, when Bond is talking to her about killing another person, is one of the highlights of that film for me; it's chilling because I think Bond sees a little something of him in her where her motives were concerned, and having already been there in CR and through the first half of QoS, he is giving her some wisdom.

SKYFALL is the payoff and, along with OHMSS, the only Bond film that made me cry.

[AndyDursin]

That's the problem though -- if they were supposed to be Bond "at his start," then why is he at the end in SPECTRE, as evidenced by not only the ending but the talk of him being old and tired. How did we end up going from them actually not moving his character forward much at all in the 2nd film, to him being all the way done at the end of the latter? The progression just isn't there.

[Paul MacLean]

I wasn't impressed by her at all. The whole business of her own little revenge angle was muddled and extraneous.

Oh, I don't even remember anything about her character. She's a dish, that's all I'm saying!

[Eric Paddon]

Didn't do anything for me there either. Give me Jill St. John in DAF any day!