Genre – Action
Movie Total Runtime – 1 Hour 46 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes
I didn’t want to open on my thoughts on Casino Royale, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll rant about shakycam. The opening car chase is filmed in such a nauseating manner I think the cameraman is having a seizure. I can’t tell what the hell is going on, who’s doing what, or who’s even in what car. It hurts to watch and certainly doesn’t help me get into the movie. This is the very first scene. It has been edited down to tiny, half-second cuts, which don’t help the disorientation in the slightest. Who the *bleep* thought any of this was a good scene, and why weren’t they shot?
For *bleep*s sake, your action scene shouldn’t leave me sick from dizziness. They even managed to screw up the iconic musical chords that lead into the opening credits. You are not endearing me to your film. I have not had any substantive subjects to cover in the first seven and a half minutes. After that they decided to exposition dump stuff related to Casino Royale, meaning they’re opted to be a direct sequel rather than the formula that works.
So after a cryptic conversation with a prisoner, a mole starts shooting and we get another muddled and confusing shakycam sequence where I can’t tell what is going on. I suppose it’s a foot chase between Bond and the mole who killed the prisoner. But more than half of the runtime is blur, and it still does the confusing quick cuts ever fraction of a second or so. The CGI stands out because, shocker, it isn’t as blurry.
It physically hurts to watch this movie and I’m all of 15 minutes in.
After half a minute of exposition, Craig goes to Haiti for the next nauseating action scene, where he again ends up killing their lead without learning anything. Not much of a spy, are you, Danny? Of course the next lead has to just pick him up.
The villains appear to be straw capitalists, trading an engineered regime change for a rectangle of “worthless desert” which so clearly isn’t. So far nobody has the screen presence to be called a Bond villain. Craig does stupid stuff to endanger the mission and save the girl before she can carry out her plot to kill the deposed despot of whogivesacrapstan.
Another dizzying chase scene, this time on a boat. A half hour in and my investment in the story is zero. My entertainment by the action scenes is negative, as they’re painful to watch, and my determination to finish the film is solely to get this review done.
Badguy is making a deal with the Americans regarding the oil they assume is under the ‘worthless desert’. But deposed despot of whogivesacrapstan has said that previous searches failed to find any. I’m going to concluded that what the straw capitalists found wasn’t oil, since the writers think they’re clever. In case the stream of consciousness style isn’t evident enough, I’m writing this while I watch, so I don’t already know.
In Austria, Craig crashes a party for the obligatory tuxedo scene.
The eavesdropping on straw capitalists gives away my earlier assumption, and Craig is dumb enough to give away that he’s listening. You could say he’s trying to flush out the straw capitalists, but a number of them don’t give themselves away. So it’s debatable whether starting yet another overedited shakycam sequence is worth it. I’d say no. When confronted about another body along his route, Craig opts not to just tell the truth and say “I didn’t shoot that one.” I’m not sure why. He was talking to M at the time, and they are supposedly on the same side.
Craig goes to talk to someone whose identity I can’t figure out because he has opted to go off-book rather than deal with his employers. That doesn’t get him far other than picking up a Henchman before MI5 catches up to him in Boliva and tells him to get on the Next flight to London. Of course he doesn’t. Straw Capitalist is in the middle of running an eco-grift, and Craig recklessly and stylelessly interrupts. He lacks any of the charisma the character is supposed to have. This gets his Henchman killed. The death scene takes a while in attempt to introduce pathos. It doesn’t work.
Given that the next scene is in the desert, I presume this is the ‘worthless’ land in question. They get attacked by a CGI plane that is one step above Korean war stock footage that occasionally transforms into a prop trainer. After the eco-grift scene I think what they found is water, and it’s a Nestle plot, since they are now over a sinkhole. The leap into the sinkhole is one of those “that should have killed them moments” given the distance between opening the parachute and impact. There was not enough time to decelerate. If I had cause to be charitable, I would have given it to them.
Craig has to actually spot the water to realize that sinkholes are made by water. And My guess is proved correct. Evil straw capitalists are somehow ‘causing drought’ to make their newly acquired water reserves on the ‘worthless land’ more valuable. We get a sob scene of Bolivian locals around their dry well as Craig leaves the hinterland.
M catches up to Craig, having found MI5 girl drowned in crude oil as misdirection and imitation of the gold paint scene from a much better movie, because the writers think they are so clever. Craig decides the best way to prove his innocence is to beat up M’s goons in the elevator and go walkabout. You know if Craig actually reported back the information he had, he wouldn’t have as many problems with his own boss. Craig meets with Black Felix to talk about straw capitalist’s next moves, since he has no other sources of information. This ends with another shakycam sequence that is mercifully short.
Back in the desert, straw capitalist has to pay off the locals to get his coup rolling. Given that there’s twenty minutes left, I predict a lengthy shakycam climax. Especially as deposed despot of whogivesacrapstan is arriving and the girl whose name I still can’t remember wants to kill him. To make the deposed despot of whogivesacrapstan more villainous they decide to have him start to try to rape a waitress in his hotel room just before the shooting starts.
Gunfire, explosions, and CGI, but less shakycam for once. Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that scrawny straw capitalist is a melee match for Craig. Even in real life I wouldn’t buy it. It’s borderline action girl. At least in the fight between deposed despot of whogivesacrapstan and the girl she isn’t depicted as having anything but physical disadvantage, resorting to dirty fighting and firearms to eventually do him in. Credit where credit is due, I buy their fight more. But the fire has her trapped and Craig has to abandon the fight with straw capitalist to save her.
Craig catches up to wounded straw capitalist in the desert, they name drop ‘Quantum’ as Craig ‘lets him go’ to die either of thirst or being caught by his co-conspirators. Craig catches up with the boyfriend of the girl from Casino Royale, who was never in danger because he was a honey trap. Roll credits.
The problems are that –
A: the writers are not as clever as they think they are,
B: they didn’t want to write a Bond movie,
C: They didn’t write a Bond movie,
D: they didn’t write a very good movie,
E: all of the characters felt smaller than life.
The chords leading into the closing credits were the right ones, but just don’t belong.
At least there’s only one more Craig movie on the list. I don’t recommend them if you’re a Bond fan. For me, it was less work to watch all 49 episodes of Gundam AGE than to slog through the 1.75 hours of Quantum of Solace.
I hate shakycam.
Firsts within Firsts within Firsts.
Get help.
This Firsting has made me hungry for peanut butter and jelly stuffed cookies.
I make a pretty damn good peanut butter stuffed cookie when I’m not Firsting.
I read a review of that movie on this very, very old school site that I loved to read in high school (but which has sadly declined since then):
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=quantum_of_phallus
lol High school? Thanks for making me feel old.
I used to read that guy every day.
Spoiler: The James Bond franchise has long outlived its relevance. The people who understood what it was about are mostly gone, the reason for it is long gone and the attempts to make it relevant today are clumsy and dumb.
Five thumbs down.
Five?
You live near a nuclear waste dump?
Louisiana.
Hi-yo!
I’m certainly no Bond aficionado, but I was just wondering if the quality of the later films has less to do with whoever is playing Bond (which has been discussed/debated here at length) than with the departure of Cubby Broccoli as producer. (I’m only aware of his key involvement with the franchise because how can you forget a name like that?) I leave it to those with more complete knowledge of the films to opine on that subject.
To be more specific Bond was born of England’s experience in WW2 and the following Cold War. Bond represents the outnumbered, outgunned underdog that survives by his wits in a very dangerous world full of giant monsters. Despite the allies victory in the war a lot of people identified with Bond because we had the USSR, a huge menace to the west. The public just doesnt have that perception anymore. Dr. Evil is a cartoon joke now, China and Russia are really paper tigers. The world is just a different place. Bond needs to retire and go fishing with Honey Ryder.
Doctor Evil incorporated into WEF and became a thousand times more powerful. He is not a joke.
His retard kids, primarily his retard daughter, took over, and were apparently responsible for the;; stronk wamen feminist “undertones” in the most recent flick (which is the only Bond movie since 1995 that I haven’t seen in theaters; I’m guessing I’m probably done with the franchise).
Doctor Evil incorporated into WEF and became a thousand times more powerful.
A good story [narrative] doesn’t have to be true to be useful.
I re-read all of the books (including the short stories) a while back and not only were they terribly dated but most of the bad guys were pretty laughable from today’s perspective.
But were they fun villains?
Wonderful, wonderful rant. Beautifully descriptive too.
Thanks for watching so I don’t have to.
Shakycam makes me nauseous too.
Thank you, I’m glad you were entertained.
I loathe shakycam (my brother calls it “Drunk Cameraman” .
Less catchy, but “alcoholic cameraman who hasn’t had a drink in 16 hours”.
Is it a way to just distract from lazy fight/chase choreography?
Very much so.
#metoo
It’s an easy way for no-talent hacks to “cameraman”.
I’ve seen a Craig Bond and after reading this description I don’t even know if it was this one. There was just nothing memorable about it.
Itβs an easy way for no-talent hacks to βcameramanβ.
So, the autotune of cinematography?
Shakey cam is great, in certain circumstances. If you ever see the movie Narc with Jason Patrick and Ray Liotta, it is used in the first scene and it gives a real sense of action along with disorientation that sets the tone for the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xfrmlcIQf4
I saw this one!
I remember that shot and watched it over and over. Then I got a breakdown of how they stet it up and shot it. It is famous for a reason. It is incredible.
I did the same when it was released on home video.
Forget about Welles, the hospital oner in Hard Boiled is far and away the best action sequence ever put to film.
“Good Fellas” had that long tracking shot of entering the night club through the kitchen and all the way to their stage side table. That was well done as well.
There is a wonderful De Palma B-movie “Raising Cain” that has a looooong tracking shot for no particular reason.
There have been a number of those over the decades and all were tributes to Wells’.
When Wells did it it blew everyone away. It is one of those classics that holds up over time. You cant take your eyes off of it and the tributes are the same way. It is the cinematographer’s version of a Mona Lisa.
Rather than remaking sequels to death perhaps todays ‘talent’ given their extraordinarily improved tools should be giving us more not less art.
1917 has some amazingly long shots.
I second on the shaky cam. It is a cheap way to portray stunts of Bruce Lee quality using actors with Orson Wells physical abilities.
You’re a more static, noir-y guy. You look at all those little ants moving ’round down there, but your eyes and camera are fixed.
And we know you. You wouldn’t dream care if one of those ants.. suddenly stopped moving. Another dot, is all. Why the big bother?
I. Freakinβ. Hate. Shaky. Cam.
I agree with (some) other posters here: The best Bond reboot needs to go back in time to the Soviets.
Why the fuck not? Perhaps expecting too much historical knowledge from the audience? Don’t wanna piss the ‘wrong’ people off? (See also: China is never the villain anymore.)
So much could be done with a gritty, but ‘real’ to life and focused on the subterfuge secrecy of Real Life spying.
*And fuckin’ hot bitches, natch.
(Honey Pot spycraft is ubiquitous, nefarious, and entertaining. Me want more.)
If you want to see what real life soopersekret spies are like watch ‘The Taylor of Panama’. It is an excellent documentary. The only thing it lacked was accurate alcohol consumption and not enough local girls.
βFor Your Height Onlyβ is also a great offshoot of Bond Films. Better than Roger Mooreβs work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B-AAF2mWOvU
βFor Your Height Onlyβ
Great way for carnies to entice, and belittle, the Short Frys among us waiting to go on the ride.
Itβs awesome, and I will see you Thursday.
Also I may be shorter than you. I am shrinking by the year.
“From Russia With Love”
I started to watch some Bond film a while back. It opened with an interminable chase/fight involving scaffolding. It was so excruciatingly stupid I turned it off.
I hate shakycam.
#metoo
It’s a product of the Bourne era of Hollywood action cinematography (hence the shakycam), but is vastly overhated, IMO. It was a fun romp in the theaters, at least, unlike Die Another Day, which was only 6 years earlier. I’d put it in the same general bracket as, say, View to a Kill.
I can’t over-hate on a technique which causes me physical pain to watch.
Chase scenes should always be done with Shaky Cam, they are never integral to the plot, make them quick and frantic just as they would be in real life and move on. Car chases are the worst, Bullit, The French Conection, Smoky and the Bear all would be better movies if they elided over the chase scenes and let Steve, Gene and Burt and Jackie have more screen time doing their thing.
More “I’m gonna Bar-B-Que your ass in molasses” , Less “Vroom Vroom.”
Tend to agree that chase scenes are filler, time-wasters, with very rare exceptions.
That said, nothing should ever be done with shaky cam.
Taking a page from Sean.
Southern White Trash Charcuterie plate:
https://www.glibertarians.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG_2401-scaled.jpeg
Those grapes look yummy. So does the bacon thingy.
Bacon wrapped jalapeΓ±o with cream cheese!
π
Burn After Reading is a far more accurate and entertaining depiction of espionage than any Bond movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO8roISHjJo
I got a tour of CIA HQ back in 2002. It was a reward for a science fair project whereby I built a miniature radio transmitter.
https://platedlizard.blogspot.com/2023/11/my-cia-memento.html
I’ve been on their radar for a long time.
https://youtu.be/LlOSdRMSG_k
Shakeycam viewed on a tv stuck in soap opera effect would get me to reenact Pat’s avatar.
The best Bond chase scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB7ZWNlF8DY
Speaking of unwatched…I finally got around to watching Atlas Shrugged Part I. Meh.
A realistic spy thriller in this era would involve the Chinese, and Hollywood doesn’t have the balls for that. Hell, CIA doesn’t. That’s why their trying to recruit with internet videos.
https://apnews.com/article/china-cia-informants-ratcliffe-videos-e5a094e39593726442826711b67486f9
That ain’t how you play the game.
Hint: https://www.harvardcsa.org/about/
Think of how long this country existed without a spy service. Now think of how badly the spy services we have have FUCKED UP since they became significant. I think there is a damn good argument to going back to the old ways.
::The Culper Ring has infiltrated the chat::
War obviously requires intelligence operations, and we have not always been at war with Eastasia.
And I do believe that needing to please the Chinese market is a big part of why Hollywood sucks anymore.
Yep. Culture-specific stories and nuanced humor don’t carry over well into a dubbed movie. What does carry over? Explosions, shooting, and big boobz. Nothing wrong with any of that – believe me – but movie execs aren’t going to greenlight anything like “Footloose” these days. The knowledge of American culture and its various rifts would make that an utterly baffling film in any other country (except possibly Canada).
You don’t even get the big tits much anymore.
I seem to remember the Chinese complaining about a villain so Hollywood changed it – might have even been a recent Bond film. What they say, goes in Hollywood these days it seems.
It was the remake of “Red Dawn” when it showed the PRC invading North America. It was changed to have the invaders being from nK.
“That wasn’t us. That was our retarded step-child” ?
I, for one, was totally fooled by that.
Yeah, that sounds right.
And I do believe that needing to please the Chinese market is a big part of why Hollywood sucks anymore.
Agreed. China can suck it.
Hey. Do not hate on Daniel Craig. He does the best he can with what he’s given.
I really like “Layer Cake”
That was a good flick.
Layer Cake literally got Craig the Bond franchise, and for good reason..
UnCiv is, of course, wrong about everything in Quantum of Solace. QoS is easily the best Craig Bond flick, and better than any of the Pierce Brosnan Bond flicks except Goldeneye, and all the Roger Moore Bond flicks, which were all absolute garbage.
Also, the best Bond was Timothy Dalton. Crying about it wonβt change the facts.
Sheldon, you are incorrect. Lying about it won’t change the facts.
Kids these days. *shakes head sadly*
Daniel Craig is very lovely eye candy.
Pierce Brosnan, on the other hand, is a god.
Brosnan did the best he could with the awful writing, Iβll give him that.
Moore should have stuck with The Saint. It was a lot more suited to his rangeβ¦
I comment on what the film gives me.
He was really good in Road to Perdition, which I believe is a criminally underrated mob movie.
(Get it?? “Criminally”? Please tip your waitresses and try the chicken wings! I’ll be here all week!)
I don’t remember him being in that movie.
Daniel Craig as Connor Rooney?
** Spoiler Alert **
The Irish mob boss’s loser son who killed Sullivan’s (Tom Hanks) family partly to hide his embezzling and partly out of jealousy?
It must have been too long since I watched it, since that still isn’t ringing a bell.
This little prick?
That movie is admittedly not well known. When I was a teenager, it was in my regular rotation for “stoned movie night”, haha.
Sunshine is under rated, Y’allins should try it sometime
I try to get outside as much as possible when I’m not doing my lame computer-based job. I have big plans to transform the backyard into a supreme lounging spot, complete with an intact fence so I can let the dogs roam around and sniff their previous poops while I read books and drink Campari & soda on a patio chair.
I need to get as much shirtless jogging time as possible before the winter so I can cram in that Vitamin D. I know, I know, these euphemisms…
Sounds like a nice idyll, make it happen and you wont regret it
Peace
So you’re stealing GT’s idea for Tranquility Base. π
If you have to roll down your illegally tinted windows at a stop to see cross traffic, maybe it’s too much. Also, you’re a fucking idiot who should get your DL yanked.
Needs more sunlight,
Indeed
Cops should never have tinted windows.
Enjoy your rest, Glibblets with your Gimlets. Today, my Friday proceeds *your* Monday. And mine ends at 2pm. So there. Think about it. *Larry David glare intensifies*
*mirror cracks* I hope our workweeks end and begin in soothing matrimony. The Cubs swept the Angels and Tucker is hitting once again. Hope it further spreads.
π
i=1; for each in *; do mv “$each” “11.09.001.`printf “%02g” $i` `echo $each | cut -d’ ‘ -f2- -`”; let i=$i+1; done; ls
You didn’t declare $i.
yes I did.
Oh, let me guess, you’re mired in a language that requires typing the variable.
Sorry, this is BASH. It’s not like that.
I don’t do much programming, but when I tried to learn a language, it was Perl.
I made it a point to comment out open a close braces so I could find the non-matching ones more easily.
Those curly quotes make my head hurt.
Give me strong typing or give me death!
I blame wordpress for the curling quotes. I can’t call them “smart” quotes because the -d’ ‘ is supposed to be enclosing a space in quotes to define the delimeter.
The script works exactly as intended before wordpress reformatted it.
ππππππ ππππππ
[ Sean’s Nazi sympathies confirmed ]
Time to get out and crush your enemies, Glibs!
β οΈβπΌπ₯Ύ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ6zVSIWgxA
πΆπΆ
You’ve reminded me of something that happened in the “Shadow of Mordor” game where their much vaunted nemesis system was supposed to empower Orcs that defeated you. At the end before the climaxic unexpected QTE, you’re met by a force led by whoever the computer decided was your most hated and/or effective foe based upon nemesis rankings, even had you killed them already. Thing was, I’d been so systematic at crushing potential enemies that when I got their, my reaction was “Who?” because it was some orc I’d eliminated so long ago I’d forgotten about him.
Never played that.
You didn’t miss much.
It literally bricked my computer. Twice. I didn’t install it a third time.
[ Unknown User has crushed Sean ]
Good morning, Sean, U, Ted’S., and EfE!
Morning, GT.
How goes things?
So far so good! This should be a fairly quiet week at work, being late in the month and likely with a lot of people taking vacation ahead of the holiday weekend. (Not me, though I might be able to take Thursday and/or Friday, but no travel plans.)
How about you?
Well, I’ve got no travel plans, nor the leave to execute them if I did. Plus my supervisor is on vacation until after the holiday, so I have to work to maintain coverage. Then one of my direct reports is out, so I have to work to maintain coverage. I’m in my cube with twice the normal amount of caffiene because sleep has become a foreign concept. I’m wondering if I’ll have to take a safety nap under my desk after the end of the workday.
π
It seems my self-sabotage dial has been cranked up to 11.
Stop hitting yourself!
π€¦ββοΈπ€¦ββοΈπ€¦ββοΈπ£
And just like that, Democrats love police again, because βtheyβre trainedβ to fight crime. Not like that icky Nat. Guard. π
What’s sad is that they’re probably fooling some people.
Democrats pounce, it is known.
Cops are there to clean up the mess, at least as currently used.
I guess if you had them actually walking (not driving) around bad neighborhoods the sight of them might deter some small amount of crime but mostly it seems like they are not actually “fighting” crime.
A fine Glib morning to all.
Good morning, JI! How are you today?
Splendid. While the wife is enduring some nasty wind/dust storms at Burning Man, I have a week of beautiful weather in store at home. There will be horsing around and golf.
suh’ fam
whats goody
Not much.
Good morning.
Yesterday is the laziest I’ve ever been since college. I didn’t leave the house, and Lily didn’t want me to. I wonder if there was some sort of government experiment spraying a “meh” inducing agent over my area.
I had a complete failure of making sourdough bread. I would think my starter is dead, except I had used it the day before to make pancakes, and it seemed alive then.
I was lazy yesterday too, but that’s because I went and climbed a mountain Saturday.