Quock of Shite?
Tonight, Becca and I saw Quantum of Solace. Also known as Quantum of Stability, because that's all the cameras had during the action scenes. This movie was directed by a different fellow than Casino Royale, and it shows. Forster's idea of tense action sequence is EXTREMELY TIGHT SHAKY CAMERA WITH OMGWHATISTHAT LOTS OF HEYLOOKOVERHERE JUMP CUTS. There was a point in one of the initial sequences where I could tell that someone was climbing on a drainpipe, but I'll be damned if I could tell you if they were climbing up or down. To say nothing as to the uncertainty whether I was watching Bond or the thug. I mean, c'mon. If I can't tell if someone's climbing something upwards or downwards, there's a problem. And it's not like I'm some geezing old codger who only brought his reading glasses by mistake; I'm in the target "male, 18-30" demographic. I'm a lifelong gamer, FPSes and all! I'm used to shaky PoV and bad perspective. Feh. So instead of being all, "Wow, this action is great, and tense!" it was like wasted footage. "What's happening now?"

The movie suffers the normal problem of regression; after any statistical outlier, a return to the mean is much more probable. The denouement was lacking and over altogether too quickly. They softened M a bit, but didn't use her to good effect. She was fairly passive and reactive, not at all in control the way you'd expect the head of an intelligence agency (even a female one) to at least pretend to be. This movie is useful as a bridge between two decent spy films, but it is itself a revenge film, which is what the director set out to create. The legacy of this film will depend on what they do with the franchise next. As a standalone, the plot revolves too much around the previous movie (Becca said she was completely lost). Bond spends all his time solo bavenging and not actually spying (he's even on suspension for part of the movie; it started to feel like they were remaking License to Kill). He doesn't even tell M, "psst, hey, it's the water kthxbye." Which is sad. The last movie was really about the people and who he could rely on or not, but this one was just about everyone he came into contact with dying. That's alright, if it leads to some growth for the character. If they really expand this Quantum Group thing and have Bond work with, you know, his intelligence organization again, then I think they will have gone a long way towards establishing this as a new Bond era rather than just "Casino Royale and then whatever drek followed it."

Whatever, it was still better than anything Roger Moore ever did.