Not Good But Not Bad
Added 11/25/2009
Casino Royale was great and of course there was going to be a sequel. Unfortunately, we got this. It just doesn't feel like a Bond film. Sure there's a guy named James Bond who drives an Aston Martin and just happens to work for the British government and a woman named M but its just not the same. Whereas Casino Royale did feel like a Bond film, just not as much since they were exploring how Bond began. For the first part of the film, all Craig does is kill people left and right and there are action sequences one right after the other, which doesn't help much. About halfway through though the story does start to take shape with the introduction of the mysterious Quantum organization (reminiscent of SPECTRE) and Mr. White appears in the beginning and in the middle (a possible recurring villain like Blofeld?). I just don't think the producers put that much effort into this one, probably just thought people would see it because of how successful the previous film was. The acting though is excellent. Daniel Craig adds more emotional depth to Bond as recovers from the loss of Vesper. Olga Kurylenko is also an emotionally scarred character and will probably the one Bond girl 007 doesn't sleep with. Mathieu Almeric is pretty bad as the villain but that's not his fault as the Greene really isn't that interesting of a character. Dench continues to be the definitive M, conveying that she wants to trust Bond but wants him to control his emotions. This is David Arnold's worst score out of his five (I think its time for the producers to look elsewhere), sounding listless for the softer scenes and obnoxious for the action. And again, no James Bond Theme in this. Jack White and Alicia Keyes sing THE worst (yes, Madonna's is slightly better) Bond song, though the backing music sounds good, should've been an instrumental. Hopefully, with the traditional gun barrel used at the end, it will herald the return of a more traditional Bond film.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Quantum of Nonsense
Added 11/22/2009
Sadly, since Daniel Craig came onto the scene I've felt increasingly alienated from the franchise. Undoubtedly Craig is a fine actor, but then again so is Al Pacino, Tom Hanks and Michael Sheen, but I'd imagine they've never been serious contenders for the role of 007! Really if Craig were to appear in a Bond flick, he'd be best suited to either the Robert Shaw 'Red Grant' character in From Russia With Love, or that of 006 in Goldeneye - in other words, playing a villian. To have him playing the great man himself is frankly laughable. Aside from my disapproval of Craig as Bond, I can appreciate the merits of 'Casino Royale', I cannot, however, see any such merits in this offering. Anyway, moving on, there's very little in this film to affiliate it with its predecessors, QOS is simply an action movie and not a very good one at that. If we're to have countless set pieces with very little story in-between, at least make the action watchable. The camera filming the proceedings may as well have been placed in a cement mixer - don't get me wrong, from what I could make out, it looked pretty decent fair - although we'll never know because director, Marc Forster, insists on adopting this increasingly annoying practice of shaky camera work coupled with rapid edits - all in a vain effort to make the viewer feel part of the action. For the record, this style of film making is woeful and the sooner this trends dies away the better - incidentally, Forster's previous films weren't action driven and boy does this show! So, a Bond movie without any opening gun barrel, no Q; no gadgets, no moneypenny, minimal use of the Bond theme, an actor who doesn't resemble the pre-conceived image the majority of the audience has of 007 and no utterance of the immortal line "Bond, James Bond" - I'm all for a change of direction in the series, the last two Pierce Brosnan efforts were tired and clichéd. However, instead of working within the world of 007, the producers seem to have thrown in the towel and opted simply to make action movies with a character called James Bond - all this instead of making actual James Bond movies. This is a fundamental mistake and only goes to affirm the notion that, where once 007 dictated the action movie genre, now it simply follows the rest. Oh as for the actual DVD itself, this is nothing spectacular either....
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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Crisply Entertaining
Added 11/10/2009
Britain's favorite walking phallus has returned in a crisply entertaining film. Previously James Bond films were becoming derivatives of each other, a narcisstic navel-gazing that reached its zenith in "Tomorrow Never Dies" (most of its scenes were lifted from previous Bond films -- a cinematic feat in itself). Now with "Quantum of Solace" the James Bond franchise has come to a sad understanding that its white adolescent market has matured and become more culturally and sexually sensitive. So now that the franchise can no longer just copy itself it's decided to copy a more successful spy franchise: the Jason Bourne series. (The movie's early scene of James Bond chasing and fighting a double agent on the rooftops of Italy is an exact replica of a Jason Bourne action sequence.) And the result is that this is by far the best James Bond movie -- although it's still a very bad Jason Bourne movie.
Previously the best James Bond movie was "Die Another Day," with its comic book feel because James Bond is, after all, a comic book character. In fact the Japanese have shown with Golgo 13 that James Bond really is a cartoon. Golgo 13 is Japan's anime version of James Bond, and he literally just fornicates and kills. With his square face and tight muscular body covered in a trenchcoat Golgo 13 also looks and feels like the walking phallus that we've always suspected James Bond to be.
Golgo 13 is bland and boring, and so what explains his popularity? I suspect it's because of the popularity and pervasiveness and influence of James Bond, and Japan's need for its own walking phallus to direct the sexual angst of Japanese teenagers.
But now James Bond is not so popular, and it's because we're living in a cosmopolitan multi-cultural world; the era of the colonial master as represented by Bond is long gone. So the franchise decided to re-invent itself by going back to the very first James Bond novel "Casino Royale." "Casino Royale" may have been the grittiest and most original James Bond film in a long time but it was also very stupid. But worse than stupid it was also difficult to mass produce and copy because there were -- so unknown to James Bond films -- character development and plot elements.
Giving a walking phallus a back story and human emotions can be a very difficult thing, and so it was very wise of the director to limit as much of the story as possible, and focus purely on the action. There are stupid and there are smart plagiarists: stupid ones copy fully (I once had a classmate who copied another's test, including the name -- an act so stupid I thought it must have been deliberate), and the smart ones know what they can copy (Bourne's fast and tight action sequences) and what they can't copy (culturally-relevant themes such as individual alienation that make Bourne both sympathetic and admirable).
Hopefully, future James Bond films will continue to steal shamelessly but smartly.
1 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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The best Bond ever...
Added 11/8/2009
Daniel Craig is the best Bond ever. The high energy, action packed fight and chase scenes in Casino Royale and Q of S make this the Bond venue that Bond was meant to be. On a scale of 1-10, Craig rates an 11 in the double-oh scheme of things. Hurry up with the next adventure.
1 out of 7 people found this helpful.
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Worst Bond movie ever
Added 11/6/2009
No reason to belabor these comments - if you enjoyed the Connery/Bond movies, you will find this to be a deeply and excruciatingly painful degradation of the Ian Fleming novels. I will not watch or purchase another Bond movie with Craig in the lead role - for my money, he is almost the perfect "anti-Bond" - no culture, no sophistication, a deadly dull "tough guy" and totally politically correct - what a bore!!!
4 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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Not Good But Not Bad
Added 11/25/2009
Casino Royale was great and of course there was going to be a sequel. Unfortunately, we got this. It just doesn't feel like a Bond film. Sure there's a guy named James Bond who drives an Aston Martin and just happens to work for the British government and a woman named M but its just not the same. Whereas Casino Royale did feel like a Bond film, just not as much since they were exploring how Bond began. For the first part of the film, all Craig does is kill people left and right and there are action sequences one right after the other, which doesn't help much. About halfway through though the story does start to take shape with the introduction of the mysterious Quantum organization (reminiscent of SPECTRE) and Mr. White appears in the beginning and in the middle (a possible recurring villain like Blofeld?). I just don't think the producers put that much effort into this one, probably just thought people would see it because of how successful the previous film was. The acting though is excellent. Daniel Craig adds more emotional depth to Bond as recovers from the loss of Vesper. Olga Kurylenko is also an emotionally scarred character and will probably the one Bond girl 007 doesn't sleep with. Mathieu Almeric is pretty bad as the villain but that's not his fault as the Greene really isn't that interesting of a character. Dench continues to be the definitive M, conveying that she wants to trust Bond but wants him to control his emotions. This is David Arnold's worst score out of his five (I think its time for the producers to look elsewhere), sounding listless for the softer scenes and obnoxious for the action. And again, no James Bond Theme in this. Jack White and Alicia Keyes sing THE worst (yes, Madonna's is slightly better) Bond song, though the backing music sounds good, should've been an instrumental. Hopefully, with the traditional gun barrel used at the end, it will herald the return of a more traditional Bond film.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Quantum of Nonsense
Added 11/22/2009
Sadly, since Daniel Craig came onto the scene I've felt increasingly alienated from the franchise. Undoubtedly Craig is a fine actor, but then again so is Al Pacino, Tom Hanks and Michael Sheen, but I'd imagine they've never been serious contenders for the role of 007! Really if Craig were to appear in a Bond flick, he'd be best suited to either the Robert Shaw 'Red Grant' character in From Russia With Love, or that of 006 in Goldeneye - in other words, playing a villian. To have him playing the great man himself is frankly laughable. Aside from my disapproval of Craig as Bond, I can appreciate the merits of 'Casino Royale', I cannot, however, see any such merits in this offering. Anyway, moving on, there's very little in this film to affiliate it with its predecessors, QOS is simply an action movie and not a very good one at that. If we're to have countless set pieces with very little story in-between, at least make the action watchable. The camera filming the proceedings may as well have been placed in a cement mixer - don't get me wrong, from what I could make out, it looked pretty decent fair - although we'll never know because director, Marc Forster, insists on adopting this increasingly annoying practice of shaky camera work coupled with rapid edits - all in a vain effort to make the viewer feel part of the action. For the record, this style of film making is woeful and the sooner this trends dies away the better - incidentally, Forster's previous films weren't action driven and boy does this show! So, a Bond movie without any opening gun barrel, no Q; no gadgets, no moneypenny, minimal use of the Bond theme, an actor who doesn't resemble the pre-conceived image the majority of the audience has of 007 and no utterance of the immortal line "Bond, James Bond" - I'm all for a change of direction in the series, the last two Pierce Brosnan efforts were tired and clichéd. However, instead of working within the world of 007, the producers seem to have thrown in the towel and opted simply to make action movies with a character called James Bond - all this instead of making actual James Bond movies. This is a fundamental mistake and only goes to affirm the notion that, where once 007 dictated the action movie genre, now it simply follows the rest. Oh as for the actual DVD itself, this is nothing spectacular either....
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
|
Crisply Entertaining
Added 11/10/2009
Britain's favorite walking phallus has returned in a crisply entertaining film. Previously James Bond films were becoming derivatives of each other, a narcisstic navel-gazing that reached its zenith in "Tomorrow Never Dies" (most of its scenes were lifted from previous Bond films -- a cinematic feat in itself). Now with "Quantum of Solace" the James Bond franchise has come to a sad understanding that its white adolescent market has matured and become more culturally and sexually sensitive. So now that the franchise can no longer just copy itself it's decided to copy a more successful spy franchise: the Jason Bourne series. (The movie's early scene of James Bond chasing and fighting a double agent on the rooftops of Italy is an exact replica of a Jason Bourne action sequence.) And the result is that this is by far the best James Bond movie -- although it's still a very bad Jason Bourne movie.
Previously the best James Bond movie was "Die Another Day," with its comic book feel because James Bond is, after all, a comic book character. In fact the Japanese have shown with Golgo 13 that James Bond really is a cartoon. Golgo 13 is Japan's anime version of James Bond, and he literally just fornicates and kills. With his square face and tight muscular body covered in a trenchcoat Golgo 13 also looks and feels like the walking phallus that we've always suspected James Bond to be.
Golgo 13 is bland and boring, and so what explains his popularity? I suspect it's because of the popularity and pervasiveness and influence of James Bond, and Japan's need for its own walking phallus to direct the sexual angst of Japanese teenagers.
But now James Bond is not so popular, and it's because we're living in a cosmopolitan multi-cultural world; the era of the colonial master as represented by Bond is long gone. So the franchise decided to re-invent itself by going back to the very first James Bond novel "Casino Royale." "Casino Royale" may have been the grittiest and most original James Bond film in a long time but it was also very stupid. But worse than stupid it was also difficult to mass produce and copy because there were -- so unknown to James Bond films -- character development and plot elements.
Giving a walking phallus a back story and human emotions can be a very difficult thing, and so it was very wise of the director to limit as much of the story as possible, and focus purely on the action. There are stupid and there are smart plagiarists: stupid ones copy fully (I once had a classmate who copied another's test, including the name -- an act so stupid I thought it must have been deliberate), and the smart ones know what they can copy (Bourne's fast and tight action sequences) and what they can't copy (culturally-relevant themes such as individual alienation that make Bourne both sympathetic and admirable).
Hopefully, future James Bond films will continue to steal shamelessly but smartly.
1 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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