I like the movie, it was good, but not great.

I think the action at the beginning was confusing, too jerky, dialog not clear. I watched it on DVD & I had to go back & replay parts with the sound turned up and/or in slow motion to understand what they were saying & doing. During that scene in Sienna where Mr White was sitting in the chair talking, after the shooting started, it just jumped & jerked & went haywire a while. It took several viewings for me to figure out the plot.

The scene in Port-au-Prince in the car with Camille (Olga Kurylenko) was the same problem, I had to rewind & listen closely & then go back & slowly forward.

Is it just me, or do a lot of productions nowadays neglect the sound portion of production? Used to be they would dub in lines in the studio if they weren’t clear in the original shooting. Seems they’re skimping on sound now.

Actors used to be taught to clearly articulate each word so as to be understood. Now, they’re mumbling.

But, I think the comments about Quantum of Solace being a sequel to Casino Royale are right on. If I hadn’t seen CR first, this movie wouldn’t have made a lot of sense. Plotwise, I could’ve followed it, but emotionally, Bond’s dilemma wouldn’t have made as much sense. I do wish they had gotten Craig to emote more. Some closeups would’ve been nice, in the right places. I couldn’t tell what he was supposed to be feeling. And the scene where Mathis died in his arms – I wanted more. Mathis was like his father-confessor, he was the soul of the movie, of the plot.

Another thing; I am confused about the parachuting scene. They hit the ground extremely hard, I mean, I’ve seen parachuters hit hard in real life & they don’t get up, not any time soon after. I saw one guy in an elite US military parachuting unit hit so hard he took a half hour to get up on his feet. You don’t just recover fast from that. So I don’t understand this part. How is it that both of them, Bond & Camille, came down hard using one parachute that wasn’t opened early enough & literally crashed into the ground hard enough to do some extreme damage, yet the next scene with them had them just there, talking? Isn’t something missing here? Did they cut out some scenes due to Craig’s injuries?

I was really looking forward to this movie, & it’s good, but I wish they’d reshot some of the scenes to make it clearer. It could – and should – have had more production time.

Signed – Big D!!

i thought shorter (under 2 hours) worked. could easily have taken off 10-15 minutes of poker sequence from casino royale – that was the only part that dragged, imo.

i didn’t like the general comments that this was a “revenge” flick to casino’s love story. way too much of a simplication.

fwiw, here is review i wrote up:

http://rundangerously.blogspot.com/2008/11/james-bond-quantum-of-solace-movie.html

Also, a lot of the dialogue got swallowed up. I found myself wondering what was just said. I don’t know if this was because of the many foreign accents or because most of the lead actors tended to be low talkers.

I would also like to see a few smiles from Daniel Craig. I don’t want to see a return to the smirky, clowny Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan versions of Bond…but Daniel needs to have a little fun. I liked his “hand cuffs” quip, he just needed another fun line or two.

Overall, I give it a solid B. Can’t wait for Bond 23 in 2010!

My favorite scenes are the ones with Mathis, the scene with Bond and Camille preparing before they enter Greene’s lair (I’ve got a post planned about that), Fields’s final shot, and of course the opera.

There were many plot elements that were quite muddy in QOS that had no precursor in CR. What was Greene’s true motivation? What was going on with his water scheme? Why did Greene keep Camille alive after putting a hit on her? With a huge organization at his disposal, why did he hire an outside hitman? Why did he kill Fields and why with oil?

And really, if you’ve seen CR in the recent past, you should know that Mathis was NOT a double-agent. This was explained in both movies: LeChiffre said Mathis was a double to divert suspicion from the real double: Vesper. Mathis was tortured and interrogated anyway, in case there were two doubles. When he was cleared, the British bought him the villa we see in QOS as recompense.