Quantum of Solace (2008). Quantum of Solace was the first James Bond movie I didn’t catch in the theatre since, well 25 years now. I think it was several things. Daniel Craig is a great actor and has the rugged looks that’d make women swoon. The action scenes are a lot more brutal, grittier and exciting too.
However, the charm of Roger Moore, Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan’s Bonds and subtle camp of the earlier Bond movies have also been lost in the transition. I enjoyed 2006’s Casino Royale, but outside the classic Bond theme music and M from the Brosnan/Bond films, there’s now little else in the movie that signifies it as a Bond movie.
OK, so new audience, new style – but the 2006 re-imagination and this movie now just looks and feels like any other typical action-thriller.
All that said, there were still things to like in Quantum of Solace. The opening car chase was good with plenty of kinetic motion, crashes. Helped too that they looked relatively plausible – as in cars didn’t just simply explode like tinder cans every time they somersaulted LOL – and Craig’s dialog with M is always fun to listen to, especially his sardonic “I’ll do my best, m’am” when told yet again not to kill everyone he runs into.
But it’s all things you’ve seen before. That aforementioned car chase around the mountain looked and felt like the opening scene from The Living Daylights. The theme of Bond possibly out on a limb for vengeance, and as a potential rogue agent from License to Kill. And intrigue at the opera house (done before), aerial battle where Bond is flying in a weaponless crate (done before), and final showdown at an exotic futuristic-looking location… from every other Bond movie.
Still, if you like the foreign locations, the great production sets – the opera set was incredible – and new fresh looking-actresses looking for their breakout roles could be your thing. And on that, Gemma Arterton as MI6 agent Fields has the movie’s best lines.:)
So, a watchable 
– if nothing to swoon over.
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