Quantum of Solace - Movie Review

Quantum of Solace was directed by Marc Forster and once again star Daniel Craig returning in the role after the incredible Casino Royale and this film was actually a sequel bond is out for revenge after the tragic loss he faced in Casino Royale he's after an organization he believes may have been responsible for it so this film was being made during a writer strike and because of that the script was unfinished and they began shooting the film anyway and Daniel Craig and the director Marc Forster actually rewrote scenes themselves because legally they could not ask a real writer to do it and Craig was quoted as saying we had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writer strike and there was nothing we could do we couldn't employ a writer to finish it I say to myself never again but who knows there was me trying to rewrite scenes and a writer I am NOT so because of this strike and what they had to resort to to make this movie this is a very unique Bond movie it's very short it's only like an hour and 46 minutes long even at that run time though this movie feels fucking boring Quantum of Solace is one of the most listless Bond films I've ever seen the film is chocked full with intense action it's a very violent Bond movie there's not a lot of elegance to it which is something that's missing from this movie bond is supposed to feel almost royal you know you should feel there's some dignity to a James Bond movie now I love Casino Royale and it's super fucking violent but this movie feels mean the violence in the movie just comes off as action sequences it feels at times like a Jason Bourne movie one of my biggest issues with Quantum of Solace is unfortunately the direction coming off of Casino Royale they had an amazing roadmap to follow not that Marc Forster has to sacrifice a vision and just pretend like he's Martin Campbell I'm just saying that that was a two-and-a-half-hour movie with brilliant action wide shots long takes great character work incredible arcs for everyone involved it was tragic it was suspenseful and it was also super violent Quantum of Solace took all the wrong lessons from Casino Royale it was like well we have a new gritty bond and everyone likes it so we're gonna do away with a lot of the humor we're gonna do away with the jokes women are gonna have weird names the villain is gonna be named Dominic Greene he's not gonna have scarring or missing an ear or anything he's just gonna be like a guy who operates out of a shipping pier this is not what Casino Royale did I actually watched Casino Royale again last night and then Quantum of Solace directly after that because I wanted to really feel both of them in a row and watching one after the other this is a gargantuan step down in virtually every way Daniel Craig remains great as bond he's really likable he's charming he's great in the action scenes he's wonderful in this film virtually everything else is worse and the impact of that lesser quality is felt even greater because this is a direct sequel it's not just the next Bond movie it's actually continuing the story Casino Royale has a similar misconception about it that Batman Begins does both of them were viewed as dark and gritty reboot switch in a way they absolutely are both of those films though are filled with humor there's tons of jokes in Batman Begins and there's tons of jokes in Casino Royale there's tons of moments that make you smile and then make you feel like you're watching a film that's meant to make you happy and make you excited Quantum of Solace took the headline appeal of Casino Royale the fact that it was a new dark and gritty reboot and that's all people talked about and they thought okay we'll double down on that and in so doing they made a movie that's completely indistinguishable from almost every other spy action thriller out this isn't supposed to feel like a Jason Bourne movie but in many ways it does and one of the lesser ones for sure the action sequences in this movie are a travesty they're edited so poorly with so much quick cutting it's like you can't actually tell what's happening there are specific scenes when re watching it that I genuinely did not know how something happened there was just a flurry of sound effects and movement and and I suppose that was supposed to tell me that somebody was punched or a car crash or an explosion happened but there's so much missing information because of this technique that sometimes you genuinely cannot tell what the fuck is going on which tells me that mark Forrester was not the right director for this movie and I'm a fan of his I like his film stay I liked Finding Neverland I think he's a really great filmmaker but when it comes to a Bond film it's clear that he didn't really know what the franchise needs in fact he was quoted as saying that he wasn't really a big fan of the James Bond movies up until Casino Royale which is fine that's totally fine that could actually be interesting to take somebody who who has really no attachment to the character has no expectations for what a Bond film should be and say hey what's your viewpoint of a Bond film that could be really cool unfortunately his viewpoint of a Bond film is a our 46 minute spy thriller where people have boring conversations and sometimes people get punched in the face but you can't quite fucking tell I'd also like to talk about the opening title sequence this one is not that great the instrumental portion of it is really good I just don't like the lyrics or the vocals I don't think the performances are all that special interestingly Shirley Bassey who has done a lot of Bond themes and is known for them did a song that many suspect could have potentially been at least in contention as a Quantum of Solace theme it was written by David Arnold who composed the music for this movie it has the word solace in the chorus multiple times and the timing is right for when it could have come out David Arnold has said it wasn't rejected and that was fans speculation but in my opinion there's just too many coincidences even if it wasn't rejected I believe it maybe was at least being considered perhaps and it is much better than what's in this movie check out it's on YouTube and you can tell this film just wasn't scripted properly it needed multiple more drafts there's information that just doesn't really make sense for instance bond says that he didn't think Vesper was the sentimental type which is why I did a DNA check on a lock of his hair found in vespers apartment it's not him a lock of his hair I wouldn't have thought Vesper the sentimental type although there's quite a bit of time given to the fact that in Casino Royale she's wearing a necklace from a former boyfriend and he references it quite often in Casino Royale and thinks about it and you can really feel throughout the entire first act of this film that they don't know where they're going every scene seems to lead to an action set piece there's the opening car chase because apparently he had to leave mr. White's house with a bunch of machine guns blazing even though we know there's no danger it's just a horrible quick cut edited sequence this leads to one of Em's men revealing himself as a traitor and a chase of cross rooftops that doesn't even hold a candle to the freerunning chase in Casino Royale and then bond is on the trail of somebody else and that leads to a fight sequence on a balcony and at this point we're like 25 minutes to a half an hour through the movie and all we really know is that somebody was behind vespers killing and there's traitors in mi6 what did he fucking do there's just there's no story here it'd be one thing if the action sequences were amazing but they're not they are they're actually maddening they really piss you off if you like well filmed action this movie came out right in that time period where Hollywood thought everyone wanted their movies to look like Bourne or taken like every action movie just has to be this way there was this horrible string of terrible action sequences and movies like Columbiana or basically anything directed by Olivier Megaton and Quantum of Solace falls right in there and about halfway through the film you begin to realize how small-scale this film really is it doesn't seem to have any grand desires to tell a story beyond something that's so so minuscule and it can't focus on what could be a very intimate story for Bond this could be very personal for him but the film doesn't have a focus on that there's so many sequences with New Bond girls or this opera sequence where he's spying on people from this quantum organization it sort of just feels like a Saturday afternoon for bond like nothing particularly special is happening in his life even though this is supposed to be something that's very very personal to him it just doesn't come off that way the film also had a Goldfinger homage where gem Arterton is covered in oil the director mentioned that he used that as sort of like a visual metaphor to suggest that the world's most precious resource is no longer gold its oil okay well at school it didn't really work sorry Quantum of Solace is one of the biggest missed opportunities in franchise film I'm not exactly sure why they chose to make this movie even though they were in the middle of a writer's strike I don't think it was like they had to make a movie or they were going to lose the rights to the character if that was the case okay I understand that but I just feel like they should have waited until the strike was over just wait until you have a script don't follow up the best Bond movie of all time with this I'm gonna give Quantum of Solace a c-minus I'm well aware that some people enjoy this movie and that's cool if you like it great I think it's a terrible Bond movie I think it has the appeal of Daniel Craig and honestly that's about it as a story I find it incredibly boring and all the things that you would have expected coming off of what would have been an act of revenge throughout an entire movie it just kind of thrown out the window with boring villains and boring characters and and no real plot and when I say that I understand the movie has a plot of course like characters go places and they talk about things that doesn't mean it actually has one guys thank you so much as always for watching look forward to more reviews very soon and as always if you liked this you can click right here and get stuck mine eyes [Music]

Channel: Chris Stuckmann

Views: 359,473

Rating: 4.9209867 out of 5

Keywords: Quantum of Solace, Movie Review, Chris Stuckmann, 2020, 2008, Casino Royale, Spectre, Skyfall, No Time to Die, James Bond, 007, Ian Fleming, Editing, Action, Marc Forster, Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Gemma Arterton, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright, David Harbour, Scene, Clip, Trailer, Teaser, Reviews, Film

Id: zXmHx-9-maM

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Webjoker]

Couldn’t agree more. I was so so excited for this one after the incredible Casino Royale but it was such a huge letdown.