Starring: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Gemma Arterton, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini
Director: Marc Forster
Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Rating: C+
I'm not sure I entirely get the hate for this movie. It's definitely not the best in the series, but it's far from the worst - editor of Famous Marni Weisz said of the title "Yes, it's a bad title," but "At least it's not Octopussy." I kind of felt that way about a lot of the movie in general; yeah, it's not great, but at least it's not Octopussy, or really any number of bad Bond movies. At least it wasn't Die Another Day or Moonraker - and I could go on here.
In what is really a direct sequel to Casino Royale, Bond (Craig) is back and this time looking into the organization Quantum, the organization behind the events in Casino. It has been revealed that Quantum's reach is far greater than previously believed, even going so far as to have placed a double agent as M (Dench)'s bodyguard. Bond discovers that Quantum, through its leading member Dominic Greene (Amalric) is presently helping an exiled Bolivian general to overthrow his government, and Bond sets out to stop them. Everything goes to shit, however, when Bond kills an advisor to the British Prime Minister and has his privileges revoked - causing him to once again turn into a rouge agent.
Despite being an action flick this was a rather slow movie, which hindered it a lot. It was also a complicated one, which once again was a hinderance. I liked the idea of Quantum and look forward to it being revisited in later films - it's very SPECTRE-esque, and I liked SPECTRE. I think, however, in portraying Quantum here they got a bit carried away. It's rather disappointing; the thing that made Casino Royale so great was its sheer simplicity and the way it balanced the poker game with the action sequences.
The one thing that I did really like about Quantum, however, was the many allusions it makes to previous films. Still no Q or Moneypenny, but there are other little references to the earlier films. My favourite has got to be the moment when Bond found the dead girl on the bed, covered in oil. It was a really good shout out to Goldfinger and, in my mind at least, showed that while this Bond is far more serious than his precursors, he's still Bond and he knows what came before him.
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