Kids these days

It seems no-one can make an original "action" movie anymore, not since Bourne. Good old Greengrass created a monster.

Anyway, Quantum of Solace is the 'sequel' to Casino Royale. I use inverted commas because I'm not happy about calling it that, it's the 23rd Bond film, but the 2nd in this story, and I don't like continuity in Bond movies.

Quantum straight up rips off Bourne. Casino Royale was an already established bond story, and wasn't terribly like Bourne, but had it's moments. This takes that film, shoves it in it's gob, chew it up, and spits it back out. There is a roof chase, almost identical to Bourne; a car chase, almost identical to Bourne and almost identical to Casino Royale. I respect Marc Forster, I love Stranger than Fiction and Monster's Ball, but it seems he went 'lets have the opening chase ending in a construction yard' completely forgetting that happened in CR. I'm starting to realise, unless one is an auteur, director's mean jack when it comes to a film. Directors of Photography and Art Directors have more effect on my personal viewing of a film than a director, unless the director works on arts himself, such as Burton, or Tarantino, or they have a certain way of staging film, such as the Coens, or Tarantino. A director controls the action, the way the actors play it, but I don't really care about that, and if it's good, it's not the director's doing, it's the actors.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic and ranting. This film has some amazing shots. The freefall scene with Bond and Montes is tremendous, as is the fall-off-the-balcony-through-some-glass-onto-some-scaffolding sequence in Sienna (one of my favourite cities in the world, I might add). But the film didn't do it for me. I lost attention because I was watching the same film as CR or the Bournes. It did nothing new with the Bond genre that wasn't established as new in CR, other than having the sexiest and best acting Bond girls I've seen in a very long time. Casting struck a good balance between looks and ability, as the previous few efforts have seemed to say 'What's acting? Do you look good wet?'. Eva Green can't act, sorry, but she does look good wet.

Again with the ranting. This is good if you loved CR. And it's a must see as it, in a way, does carry on the story, albeit more with Bond's struggle to obey than recurring characters. It's a good action film, but I've said it before and I'll say it again, Bourne is better at it.

p.s. MATT DAMON