Review of Quantum of Solace (2008) by Guillermo B — 21 Dec 2012

A lot of what I have to say about this movie has already been said plenty, but what can you do? Marc Forster's resume proves he's a decent director, but not for something like this, especially since he's a non-action director who, with this movie made a film where action sequences fill up an overwhelming amount of the running time.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with having lots of action, it didn't work here for several reasons: Bond films aren't supposed to be balls-out action movies, Bond is not an action hero, and, even though the Bourne-films do it a lot, the quick-edits and shaky camera add (I suppose) a degree of realism to the action, but more often than not, that style of editing hinders more than it helps, making it damn hard to figure out what the hell is going on half the time.

Since Forster is not used to doing action scenes, perhaps he should be given a break, and I can see why he would use an established style as a template to work off of, but I think it would have been cool had he been more gutsy and tried his own thing instead of emulation.

What non-action scenes are present were pretty good though, and so was the homage to Goldfinger. The plot was not bad. I liked the fact that the movie was a direct sequel, but at a run time of 106 minutes, things felt very rushed and confused.

A longer run time and a little less action would have been excellent. I realize that the intention may have been to leave some stuff unanswered for the sequel, which is ok (every now and then), but I don't want it to become an ongoing trend.

Ending things more concretely is not a crime. I could go on giviving out more nitpicks, but it's not necessary. Yeah, this is a weak film in general, but especially since it's a follow up to a film that was so strong, but there are far worse films out there.

The action was good, but a little much and lacking in clarity, and the overall look of the film was great, but the muddled plot/shoddy script make it hard to get in to. Because I liked the performances, and because I believe in giving the benefit of the doubt, I'll go easy on this film.

If the mistakes here aren't rectified the next time around, I may not be so nice.