QoS - SPOILERS

[UNCLEagent]

I got a sneak preview pass for this evening's showing.

QoS feels more like a fresh Bond 'experience' than any other Bond film. Expecting this film to rival or top CR may disappoint.

First off, there is no angst over whether or not Craig can pass as Bond; CR has established this beyond any doubt. Without this distraction, and trusting Barbara's and Michael's instincts allowed me to view this film in a more relaxed state.

QoS doesn't have the storyline or plot development of CR. It is packed full of action, The kind that I usually find tedious and mind-numbing. Yet QoS is so beautifully filmed, so stylized (to the nth power) that I never found myself bored with it. The action scenes work, and while more story and plot would have been personally preferred, I found myself in awe of the visual delights. I don't think it would have worked so well had it not been for two absolutely brilliant performances by Craid and Dench. Never before has M been so consistently entertaining!

Every scene, every line, every music cue oozes Bond - without the familiar scores. While I appreciate the familiar cues of the Bond theme of films past (it can never be placed too many times, IMHO), the subtle placements sparingy placed in QoS actually seem to build more of a Bond feel. A fresher experience.

There's a lot more emotion from characters here than in any of the past films. You can feel Leiter's cynicism and contempt. Mathis' respect and warmth for Bond is reinforced here. His death comes as a surprise and is uncharacteristically wrenching, for a Bond film. Bond's maturity and depth is more fully realized here than in any previous film, including CR. His confidence and self-awareness is beautifully transitioned from his first outing.

Funny quips are abundant and roll with ease from both Craig and Dench. Nothing is forced here and we are spared any groaners.

Other highlights:
Seeing Bond deliver his Aston Martin back to HQ. Damaged, for sure but intact!!!
Field's death - a magnificent creative homage to Goldfinger.
Title graphics - fresh, with a new dimensional depth not often seen here.
Theme - it actually works! I was very disappointed hearing it online - the fixed it for the film.
Craig's first gunbarrel - god YES!!!!! I miss the 'proper' placement and hope to see it return, but here and now - it totally works!
Detective work - again, we see Bond creatively untangle threads and actually perform some honest-to-goodness investigation. No more passing through set-pieces, stringing together one mindless piece after another. Here we actually see his resourcefullness and training professionally utilized.
MI6 - nice to see more of a team effort, without stilted performances or obligatory scenes.

Weaknesses:
Plot and storyline. The villian wants to be a major 'utility'? Water-works?!? Reaslistic, yes... but hardly comparable to Global Domination.
Action - yes, it was beautifully filmed and VERY, VERY stunning, but a little more story between the fights and chases would have been appreciated.

Still, I LOVED this film. It is a fantastic Bond experience. It continues to pump the fresh blood into this franchise that began with CR and spares us any sense of staleness in a franchise that is nearly half a century old.

It's late and I'm still digesting it all. Clunky review, but let me say it: QoS is terrific! I will be back in line tomorrow night.

[conman]

Just got back from a midnight screening and need to see it again (tomorrow) to process what I just watched.

One thing I thought was a great homage was when Bond gave the Universal Export card, the name on it was R. Sterling (like the altar ego Rober Sterling in TSWLM).

[UNCLEagent]

Excellent scene!

Looking back on this, I love how the film kinda (IMHO) feels like a metaphor for the franchise.

There is this air of weariness, staleness and a sort of gliding along cluelessly within the ranks of MI6. The world is changing around them, yet they seem trapped in their own ways. Those adapting, namely the higher branches of the British government and the CIA are doing so in a resigned way; corrupting and betraying their ideals.

Bond holds true. M emphatically places her trust in him.

And then, all is well again.

Excellent, excellent ending line for a Bond film. That's two for two with Craig!

[Martini97]

I saw it right after work. Anyway, I agree with uncleagent. In my opinion the strengths outweigh the weaknesses. It was good to see the characters return. The scenery, and the locations were breathtaking. My favorite part of the whole film was the end. I must say, it would be interesting if they considered doing a remake of OHMSS because after seeing QOS, I'm convinced that it could happen; and it would probably be the most intense Bond film ever made.
The Women: I just wanted to hug Gemma as Strawberry Fields. I'm like Ah, they just reintroduced the corny names, however strawberry fields was cute. Her death, was clever-as Unc pointed out a nod to the shirley eaton's scene from GF. Camille, it's probably just me but I didn't find any sex appeal to her at all and that's not a bad thing because it fitted the whole vibe of the movie. She was like a darker and edgier version of Melina Havelock from the film For Your eyes only. Very anti-elegant, deadly, and scarred. Sometimes and I hate to nit pick, I wish that there was a little more intensity. Overall I was content with Olga's performance. The only hang up that I have about the film was the character Gregg Beam - Felix boss because all through freaking time I just wanted Phillip Seymour Hoffman, or David Morse to just bust through the movie. He didn't do anything for me. However, cheers for adding the promotion of Felix- good writing. Jeffrey Wright es excelente. In the end as stood at the edge of my seat to see "JAMES BOND WILL RETURN" at the end of the credits, I said to one of the patrons: "This was worth wait, I glady would wait another two more years.

[conman]

The film is definitely better after a second viewing. It was just too much of an overload at once on the first viewing.

The pluses -
I really like how Craig's Bond is stripped down to the basics and has to usually rely on his instincts.
The girls are not all that memorable but they really gelled well for the tone of the movie.
Craig seems really comfortable in the role (although the same can be said for the previous film) and he had some great moments in the film - one of my favorites was his interaction witht the guy on the bike right after meeting Camille.
This may be Judi Dench's finest performance as M and Mathis and Leiter were welcome returns as well.
They packed it with great refrences to classic Bonds that didn't seemed forced ala Die Another Day

The minuses -
I know this has been harped on to death but I just can't get over how bad the vocals are in the title theme.
The same with the credits. MK12 did a s**t job on them and I also hated their location cues too.
Elvis seemed like a total waste of a character. What was with the wig?
The quick-editing was a little too much at times.
The movie could have easily spent more time on character development by adding an additional 20 minutes and not seem to be overly-long.
It was great to see the gunbarrel again but please put it back at the beginning. That is always one of the highlights of seeing a Bond film in cinemas. And slow it down, Craig seemed so rushed in it.

What I didn't like or hate - I'm still uncertain on my thoughts of making a direct sequel. It worked really well but something about it felt "un-Bond". I like the idea of making QUANTUM a SPECTRE type organization but I hope they can continue this while making the rest stand alone films.

All in all a solid entry to the series that would rank somewhere in the upper-half.

[BeauButabi]

I'm sorry to say that I can't share the enthusiasm here. QoS ended up being a Bond movie pretty close to the bottom of my ranking list. Not a single action sequence in the film thrilled me in the least. Had me bored to tears. Then every once in a while they throw in a melodramatic scene and expect me to have any feelings about it. I liked Mathis and would've loved to have felt something about his death, for instance. Such a shame because they had some really great ideas with those quiter scenes that would've worked a lot better in a better Bond movie. The ending twist with Vesper's boyfriend turning out to be a honey-trap was especially interesting. Someone mentioned how there seemed to be a team dynamic with the rest of MI6. I want it to be a BOND film, not an MI6 Chonicles episode.

The movie overall doesn't feel like a Bond film at all. Not that I couldn't have enjoyed a non-Bond feeling Bond film. Licence to Kill I think is the only other Bond that didn't feel like a part of the series but I still liked that one a lot. QoS kinda feels more like a Bourne movie, though maybe I'm thinking that because of all of the shacky-cam. The pre-title sequence in the most underwhellming one in the series since Live and Let Die, and the whole movie isn't even that good as an action flick. Is Martin Campbell the only one who knows how to handle action in a Bond film anymore? And am I the only one who didn't understand why Bond and Leiter were all of a sudden great friends? They meet for two seconds in CR then suddenly they're on a first name basis like they've had a lot of history. I would've liked it if their friendship was still building at this point, then maybe the next one would have them be "old friends" depending on how much their invlovment with eachother had been insofar.

Some things I did like, the title song was a lot better than I remember when it had fist hit the net, and the titles themselves were cool-looking. Bond leaving Louie from Munich in the dessert like Blondie did to Tuco was a badass way for Bond to defeat the badguy in the end. I like the unconventiality of the main badguys' demises in the Craig Bond's so far. The chick from Hitman is still super-freaking-hot. BTW, I looked on IMDb and found out that the other chick, the one with the Oilfinger death, was born the same year that I was. That weirded me out a little bit; secondary Bond girls being the same age as me. Am I getting old? But I digress. Like I mentioned already, I really liked the twist at the end with Vesper's boyfriend and the following ending scene, but I would've felt a lot better about it had the rest of the movie matched up. I was so distraught about the movie having sucked that I could hardly pay attention to the gunbarrel. I had assumed at that point that they had done away with it altogether. I hope they put it back at the beginning for the next one.

I've heard Mikey Wilson say the next Bond is gonna be a stand alone and not connected plot-wise to the events of the first two. Good news for me. It would seem kinda weird that they'd set up this alledgedly HUGE evil organization and end it with the bad guy "telling him all about Quantum" offscreen during a car ride through the desert (maybe it's just on the back-burning like SPECTRE was between FRWL and TB?), but I feel I need at least one film that's un-connected enough to QoS to wash the bad taste out of my mouth. Hopefully they get a much better script and one that's good enough to lure back Martin Campbell. That guy knows how to make a Bond film.

[rosetta]

I was disappointed in my viewing of QoS, there was no obvious storyline to the movie and the sequences kept moving forward with no true direction. I liked CR much better and I thought it was one of the worst Bond films to date. It seemed like the whole movie was a bit of MacGuffin by the time a story started to develop, didn't care anymore was only looking forward to seeing what else would be destroyed on screen. Perhaps I should watch it again, maybe I'm missing something, right now I'd rate it 3 out of 10.

[rosetta]

Okay, I've watched it now for a 2nd time, only because my kidlet wanted to see the movie. She's becoming a Bond fan :grin:

Anyways, I've upgraded my score to 4/10. After the 2nd viewing I realized what was p*ssing me off. First off, Greene was more of a henchmen than a bad guy. He should have been seen as THE bad guy, not the immediate underling that's doing a job for the 'rest of the group'. Another p*sser was that there was no true direction of the film. Was Bond doing this for revenge? Or for M? Was he after information? Or does he just like being a renegade and ruthless with no thought for anything else? The film sequences kept going from one scene to another with no direction like the Bourne films. But there is a difference for the Bourne films, the direction was for Bourne to find out who he was in the first two movies, hence the sequences kept moving forward even if somewhat irratically. What was the forward moving purpose for this Bond film? Was it 'Quantum'? Isn't 'Quantum' the McGuffin for the movie? Only pulled out when needed? No explanation of what it is? I think that this movie was too generalized, the filmmakers should have tightened it up a bit more, dropped the whole Bond-is-a-renegade-theme and gave him more of a purpose as to why he was doing what he was doing instead of alluding to this-is-for-M or to find out about Vesper and I want revenge for what happened to her. Bond was always ruthless, but not stupid ruthless or thoughtless ruthless, it's sad to see senseless killing without Bond getting his info. Bond was always get-the-info ruthless.

But the redeeming qualities of the film are, the film score. David Arnold is awesome, his scoring is subtle and strong where and when it should be. The Bond girls, I think they're brilliant in this movie, strong, smart, kick-ass and for you guys, sexy. Everything a Bond girl should be. There are some great action sequences with humor, kinda miss seeing that in films, Bond was always good to have these. Glad to see it starting to come back.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, 4 out of 10, the film is missing something and I think what it really misses is a true BAD guy, Greene was a bit wishy-washy as a bad guy, more of a mercenary for hire than an evil person.

EDIT:

Also, why does Bond use both hands with his gun in the opening song sequence? Why???? He never needed to use both hands for his gun. :-/ Yeah, I know nitpicky but it was blaring obvious. I did like the whole song sequence part of the film, way so much better than CR's. I do hate the song though, practically cringeworthy.

[UNCLEagent]

Originally Posted by rosetta

Also, why does Bond use both hands with his gun in the opening song sequence? Why???? He never needed to use both hands for his gun. :-/ Yeah, I know nitpicky but it was blaring obvious.

Well.......

ummmm.......


























Good comments, all, in the reviews tho'.

[KingVoyeur]

Just got back from seeing it. Overall, I liked it. The action was good, if a bit frenetically edited. I thought it was a nice continuation of the first film, though it's clearly the second film in a possible trilogy. It's really a movie about ideas more than plot, which most middle chapters are. I mean, look at the title. It's all about Bond dealing with the repercussions of the events in the first film and trying to reach a balance within himself and within his world. Not that it doesn't set the stage for a major showdown between Bond, MI6 and Quantum in the next film. The Bond girls were great, loved the homage to Goldfinger with the girl drenched in oil. I do agree with Rosetta, Greene really did feel like a middleman, rather than a true villain, though if this is going to be a trilogy the Big Bad won't appear until the next film. Also, loved that we finally got a classic gunbarrel with Craig at the very end, nice touch.

My biggest complaint of the film is that damn theme song. I can tolerate it as a whole song, I like the instrumental stuff, but I HATED the way it was edited for the film. On top of that, though there were nice visuals and the titling style was nice, the whole opening sequence felt sloppy.

On a side note, I glanced at the credits as I was leaving, and saw something surprising. Did anyone else notice that under "additional voices" were listed none other than Guillermo del Toro and Alphonso Cuaron?!? What the hell voices did they do? I've never heard Alphonso speak but Guillermo has a pretty distinctive voice, yet I didn't catch it. Anyone know what they voiced?