Double O What?

[Comment Below]

By Charles Nunmaker

Grade B-

For the holidays, Quantum of Solace is one of the most action packed movies anybody could see, but the question is, who could actually keep up with it? Against the warnings of my friends, I decided to check out Quantum of Solace over the Thanksgiving holiday.

The movie starts out fast-paced as ever and picks up almost exactly where Casino Royale left off. After the beginning, the plot and the whole movie become extremely confusing. Bond, still in pain from the death of his love Vesper, is on a mission to take down the organization that was responsible for Vesper’s death; however, after a double-crossing occurs, Bond meets up with the vixen, Camille, in a dual mission to bring down an ecological organization that is involved in a military coup to overtake the government of Bolivia.

As usual, Daniel Craig’s portrayal of James Bond is nothing short of amazing. He is able to take Bond beyond all the action of being an agent to reveal that he does in fact have feelings of vengeance and grief over the loss of Vesper. Craig is also able to perform extremely well in all the action scenes with some of the extreme stunts throughout the movie.

Olga Kurylenko plays the role as Camille fairly well. The role of Camille was not the best written in the movie, but her role proves important as Camille goes out on a mission of vengeance against a Bolivian general along with Bond.

As far as action goes, this is everything an action fan could want. The fight scenes, though plagued by jerky camera shooting, are stunning and spectacular. The car chase that starts out the beginning of the movie is one of the coolest car chase scenes that I’ve seen from any action movie. This chase scene shows in less than five minutes that this movie is all about action as armed henchmen chase Bond in his Aston Martin through strip mines in Spain. It does seem, however, that the movie tries to pack too much action, as there is an action scene to almost every type of transportation imaginable. Also, some scenes are shot so choppily that it left some people in the theater in question of what just happened in the movie.

The real question throughout the whole movie that everyone asks is, “What is going on right now?” Introduction of minor characters, choppy action scenes, and minimal dialogue can result in the general questions that no one in the theater could really ever understand. I had people all around me in the theater asking, “What’s going on?” or “What just happened?” The only answer I could think of was, “I have no clue.”

This movie proves to hard-core Bond fans to be everything that a Bond movie should be. The seriousness of events even turns to the more traditional, more imaginable ways of older Bond movies with large explosions, immense action scenes, and imaginative ways of death.

For those of us who don’t follow Bond as well as a hardcore fan, this movie can be extremely confusing and hard to follow. My only advice to those that don’t want to be lost is to watch Casino Royale before you see Quantum of Solace so that you can have the whole story in mind; however, don’t let yourself take people’s warnings to heart for this movie. It can be difficult to keep up with at times; but if you are an action fan, this is your movie for the holidays.

Originally Published: Issue 714 - December 3, 2008

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