I saw Quantum of Solace last night, the new Bond movie. The best way I can describe the experience is that I was lost the entire time. I had no idea what was going on almost the whole time. The movie moves really quickly, pausing only a few times to give some details. The fight scenes also moved so fast that almost the entire time I couldn’t figure out who was what person. That was pretty annoying, actually. The camera work just constantly clipped shots way too short so you couldn’t see what was actually happening. Oh, there goes a car, whose car was that, too late, here’s another one going off a cliff, was that Bond? Pretty confusing.
Plus, Bond in this movie (spoiler alert!) is pretty much gone rogue during the whole thing, and who he attacks and takes out is pretty much irrelevant. As the movie hints at a few times, the lines between heroes and villains is blurred, and that was pretty true here. He’s chasing a dictator, then a Bolivian secret agent, then a corporate psycho, then the guy who killed his wife, then he throws a CIA agent off the roof. Huh? The whole thing was just all over the place.
There weren’t any Bond gadgets in this one, either, which kind of stunk. I didn’t realize that til the film was over. I guess it did make sense since he was pretty much on his own. I did really like the great nod to Goldfinger, though.
One thing I read on Wikipedia was that this film takes place one hour after the events of Casino Royale. I had no idea. That certainly explains why Bond is so ticked about his wife being dead, still. I never picked up on the continuity part — I thought the first one was good, but not really memorable.
Overall, an interesting film. I wouldn’t say don’t go see it, but don’t expect a typical Bond-style film. It’s more a generic action film than anything else.
One other positive note was that I saw my first trailer for Star Trek. It looks pretty cool. I’ve been avoiding all trailers / promotional materials / whatever about the new movie because I’ve consistently found it’s a much better experience walking into any movie having zero expectations. I must say, though, that I was sure that this movie was going to totally suck, but now I’m sold on checking it out. My early verdict would be that it looks like it’s going to be a good action movie, but not really a Star Trek movie in the traditional sense (seems to be a common theme).
Ah, well, the real problem is that there doesn’t seem to be much recently to go watch anyway. Maybe next year.