James Bond ~ Quantum of Solace

In the middle of tight and hectic deadlines, demands and under absolute pressure, I still did get to see James Bond just because I bought the ticket in advance, thanks to the online booking, and the optimistic me for hallucinating that this week will NOT be so chaotic. So there I was, sitting for 1 hour 45 minutes in the cinema nearby my office (thank God, my office is at Cityhall). I'm not saying that the Bond movie this time is bad. It's definitely entertaining and worth your ticket money but there are couple of things that don't seem to be right and here they are:

1. It looks like this time Bond is going Bourne! I mean, from the first chasing scene, fighting scene, and even the setting and shooting technics, it's all so Bourne!!! I even feel so nostalgic seeing Bond jumping up and down buildings in Haiti. And there's this particular building with the stair case that looks almost exactly the same one in the Bourne movie. And it kept me thinking, 'OMG, Hollywood really lacks of creativity.' I must admit the first fighting scene is so captivating. It was so intense and nerve-wracking. But, after the Haiti fighting scene, the nostalgic feeling starts lurking around until it ends.

2. No gadgets, no fancy cars! What on earth is going on??!! It makes it look like this Bond movie is running on a very low budget. The only techie stuffs that they have are: 1.the table and computer screen where you just swish and swoosh the data by your hand. But this is so 'Minority Report.' We've see this before. We want more, especially this is James Bond we're talking about here. 2. Bond's phone. It got a GPS locating system, and some massive search engines. But it's not so totally new as lots of phones do have wi-fi and so on now. And I bet the current Blackberry can function the same too.

What about the cars, then? The Ashton Martin that seems like was borrowed from the previous movie just lasts for about 5 minutes (?) before it gets squashed. And after a series of old and run down cars, Bond is finally driving ... a Range Rover? There must be some other more flashy SUV in the market to show off the luxury side of the secret agent life.

3. Something wrong with Bond. He doesn't sleep with the Bond girl!!! Just a force kiss with not much passion in the end is kind of an anti-climax for me. This is definitely the first time in Bond movie history. To ensure the audiences of his sexuality, Bond did sleep with a girl, but she's not the Bond girl. And to compare previous Bond movies that have numerous bed scenes, it just feels wrong.

4. Bond seems to go from a dandy to a brute. With so many killings and whackings, the violence seems to be over-bearing. In this movie, Bond seems like to do the killings. He just practically kills every opponents he meets, even M is very concern over it. It suites more to a Bourne than to a Bond. To make it more assuring of Bond try being a Bourne, the expression shown when he whacks people looks so similar to Bourne. I just can't stop comparing throughout the movie because of this. To me, it looks like Hollywood tries to lower future Bond movies budget by roughing Bond's image. For all I know, James Bond has always been associated with luxury, until now, maybe.

My takings: You should watch it in the movie just because fighting scenes always look better in a bigger screen. But other than that? Just re-watch The Bourne Ultimatum DVD will suffice. Some says that Hollywood rushed this movie to the market to capitalize on the franchise, and I have to agree with them after seeing what I think was lacking for it to be a James Bond movie. Will it be a memorable James Bond movie? I don't think so. In my opinion, Hollywood didn't do their best in making this movie. It gives you the vibe of 'Just borrow something from somewhere and throw everything together, and the movie is up on the market.' A bit of disappointment is there but at least Hollywood didn't make it to the point of not even worth watching like their version of 'My Sassy Girl.'

There'll be definitely a sequel as they don't reveal a lot of things like what organization behind Vesper's murder. I'll be definitely expecting something more and definitely more flashy. After all, it's James Bond.