Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Quantum of Solace’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

​Over the past few weeks, we've all come together to reminisce about the wonder of the James Bond franchise and all the incredible stories that 007’s adventures have sent our way. In fact, in my review of Casino Royale I even pointed out that the Daniel Craig era has served host to some of the best stories in the history of the series.

It's important I make mention of that because one cannot have the good without the... not so good, and we would be lying to ourselves as fans if we said that every single Bond movie is perfect. After all, there were some pretty silly films that came out in the Moore era and even Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan's stellar acting managed to be overshadowed by some goofy moments and despite Daniel Craig giving the franchise new life, he is not immune to an off the cuff Bond story, as was the case with Quantum of Solace.

In fact, after all these years, I'm still not sure how I feel about this particular Bond tale because it's such a mix of both the best and the worst of the franchise... so let's just get right down to it. Truth be told, the overall direction of the story is a bit of a mess. If there's one thing a Bond film always does well, it is that it is seamless in its storytelling and that's missing from this film. The giant graphics when we go from city to city, the pacing, all of it feels out of place here.

The other issue I had with the story is that it has no identity. A great example of this is the revenge story that is basically forgotten quickly. Bond has Mister White; the interrogation is underway and then suddenly there's the big reveal that Quantum is a thing, and we don't revisit Bond's need to deal with the man who corrupted and hurt his Vesper until the end of the flick. That just seemed odd. Not to mention, it's a shame that Quantum isn't better developed. It's obvious that they have deep pockets and big plans and well, the gravity of that is never quite addressed, they come, and they go without a hint of something more for the future and the only thing that redeems them is the twist injected into Spectre.

In the end, something is just missing from the film to make it special and to this day, I still don't know exactly what it is. On one hand we get all the Bond stuff we love, a kickass spy in James Bond thanks to another fine performance from Daniel Craig. We get exotic locales and plenty of action, in fact the awesome final fight in the burning hotel deserves a quick mention but the rest is forgettable. Quantum’s potential really is wasted, and Mister Green isn't that memorable a villain and perhaps that's the issue. In that, at its core, it's just a Bond flick that's tossed together to get us to the next one and thankfully, the next one would wipe away any of the bad memories this one managed to produce. 

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