Saturday, January 31, 2009

Quantum Of Solace Review

May contain slight spoilers concerning the movie Casino Royale.

I love James Bond. I love the characters(especially the villains), I love the action, I love the plot twists and turns, and I love how the franchise just never gets old from generation to generation. But by the time the credits roll, it's rather hard to love Quantum Of Solace.

It's a shame really, because Quantum Of Solace got so many things right. It blew you away with breathtaking, edge-of-your-seat action. It grabbed your attention with intoxicating and genuinely interesting female characters who you actually cared about. It knew how to build suspense. The pacing was masterful at times. Where it really messed up was the part about a meaningful plot, which is something it appeared to work so hard for.

Casino Royale changed James Bond forever, because the films always ended with our hero, Bond, holding a lady in his arms and enjoying the payoff of all his work. Casino Royale did end end with James Bond holding a lady in his arms. However, James Bond was sobbing and the woman was dead. It was a powerful ending that lent so much new depth to the character we know to be James Bond.

Quantum Of Solace had a heck of a lot to live up to. It should have brought something new forward, more great and powerful and impacting than what Casino Royale did, or at least just as much so but in a different manner. Is that not what we expect from a sequel? Instead, Quantum monopolizes on Casino Royale's storyline by integrating a sappy subplot that, while easy to relate to if you've seen Casino Royale, doesn't go anywhere we haven't been to before a dozen times over. For the majority of the movie we watch Bond mourn the woman's death from Casino Royale, the culmination of this subplot being an all-around terrible ending that not only(to once again make use of the word) monopolizes on Casino Royale's success but also at the same time invalidates it's meaning as a movie. And seeing as the whole point of a movie so often happens to be it's meaning and the successful expression of it, it's a crime I find very hard to forgive.

7 out of 10

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