Yes, I’m a Bond fan. Take that for whatever it’s worth in measuring my opinion. It was with a bit of trepidation that I went into Casino Royale, knowing they were attempting something of a reboot of the franchise, not the least of which was the introduction of Daniel Craig as the newest face of Bond. And as it turned out, Casino Royale was a fantastic Bond film, and it did a great job at kicking the franchise into a new gear. So it was much easier to get psyched in anticipation of this film, which has the interesting distinction of being the first Bond film to be a direct sequel to a previous entry in the franchise. So, does this newest entry manage to live up to the mark set by Casino Royale? For the most part, yes. It’s not quite as good, but it does a nice job following up on it.

Writing: The three writers of Casino Royale, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade & Paul Haggis, return for this next entry. As advertised, the film picks up from where Casino Royale left off, with Bond still reeling from the loss of Vesper, having stumbled upon a new ubiquitous organization called Quantum. We have Bond going slightly off the grid with MI6 in pursuit of revenge for what happened with Vesper. And to be honest, I’m getting a little tired of Bond going “rogue” form MI6. I’d like to see them go the next three films without any plot element even closely resembling Bond not being trusted by MI6. The plot ends up being a bit more cynical and murky than the average Bond film, but it works rather well. Interestingly, the plot is a bit unapologetic to those who haven’t seen Casino Royale. At the very least, an audience member who hadn’t seen it would probably be a bit confused with who certain characters were, and how they fit into things. The script also does a nice job at laying in elements that pay off nicely later.

Production: This is the area that I’ll have the most complaint with. There’s no denying that this movie is Bond going through a bit of Bourne envy. And that’s not a good thing. The action sequences, particularly in the first act of the movie, suffer greatly from wanting to be a Bourne movie. While I may be a fan of the Bourne films, I am not a fan of their overly hand held camera work and overly-aggressive editing. Well, the action scenes in Quantum Of Solace are a bit annoying and distracting as they ramp up to an edit every second or so, with the camera completely unable to hold frame for even that short of an edit length. What’s truly criminal about that is I could tell that there was some absolutely fantastic stunt work going on, but I just couldn’t see much of it. I have to wonder what the stunt teams think when they see it. Personally, I would drive me nuts if I were one of the stuntmen and saw them chop things together so rapidly, with incompetent camera work that’s utterly unable to hold much of it in frame. And yes, I consider most of it to be incompetent camera work. Having said that, there’s some very nice cinematography to be found outside the frantic action sequences. In fact, later in the film there are some more traditionally Bond action scenes that are rather nicely filmed and edited. The movie is actually quite tight in narrative, playing things shorter than most of the Bond films. It does slow things down from time to time, but the flow of the story is really quite quick. I particularly liked the sound mix choices, playing things without fx or pulling the primary channels out of the mix to give it a rather odd and striking sound.

Cast: As anticipated, Daniel Craig is fantastic as Bond. He was surprisingly great in Casino Royale, and he nails it again. He’s got it all down perfectly, from the dialog delivery to the physicality. Olga Kurylenko, who had impressed me in Hitman (and managed to do pretty good with an utterly thankless role in the abysmal Max Payne), comes through with a very nice (and surprisingly vulnerable) character performance. Judi Dench continue her stellar work as M. I thought it was a great bit of casting against type when they first gave her the role in GoldenEye. This marks her 6th consecutive film in the role, and she continues to make the character work brilliantly. I hope they keep her in the franchise for as long as possible. Her and Daniel Craig play off each other particularly well (better even than her and Brosnan). French actor Mathieu Amalric hits the marks as a Bond baddie quite well. Jeffrey Wright makes a nice reappearance as the venerable Felix Leiter, as does Giancarlo Giannini as Mathis. Newcomer Gemma Arterton does a nice job in the brief role of Strawberry Fields (a very “Bond girl” name). All in all, an excellent cast.

Music: While David Arnold’s score lacks a bit of cohearance by itself on CD, it works quite well in the film. And I guess that’s the real way one should judge a film score. Still, it’s got some nice energy and style on CD. It could just use a bit more thematic material to hold things together. This is Arnold’s 5th consecutive Bond film, and he’s proven that he’s perfectly capable in the job. Perhaps not his best score for the franchise, but perfectly respectable. The title song by Jack White and Alicia Keys, however, is another story. It’s one of the worst Bond title songs in the history of the franchise (though it would have to work extra hard to be worse than Gladys Knight’s License To Kill). I do have to admit that after seeing the Coke promo video a number of times, I actually don’t mind the song much when you take the vocals out of it. It’s still a complete thematic flop, but it does at least have a bit of style once the excruciatingly awful vocals are removed from it. I didn’t think the title sequence was visually all that great this time, either. Not bad, but not as good as most Bond title sequences.