Marc Forster's "Quantum of Solace"

While it's not the post-"Casino Royale" letdown I'd been warned about, "Quantum of Solace" does feel like a pit-stop on the way to new Bond revelations. The man with a license to kill for queen and country is here defeated by a very underwhelming foe, Mathieu Amalric from "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". I kept thinking: "He's practically dictating his evil deeds one paraplegic wink at a time, Bond! What can you be scared of?" "Quantum of Solace" does everything "Casino Royale" did, but not quite at the same level of freshness- even Ukrainian hottie Olga Kurylenko is a step down from Eva Green, (what's with the tan? Is she supposed to be Latin?).

The plot is no more laughable than any previous one in the series, in fact, what might have seeemed cartoony on the screen turned out to be prescient (another corrupt Latin "presidente"? Oh, wait, there's a bunch of those!) There's one dog fight here that should blast your synapses away but is shot in all the wrong angles- (Dog fights are not between dogs, btw, but between planes). Maybe the blame lies with director Marc Forster, the adrenaline pusher behind... "Finding Neverland"? "Stranger than Fiction"? "The Kite Runner"? Jesus, what, they couldn't hire Merchant and Ivory? Merchant died, you say?
I'll be honest, I've watched every James Bond at least twice- yeah, you did not know that about me, but I'm a James Bond dork, surprise- and I'll keep on watching pretty much all the way through, or until they cast a Jonas Brother as my man JB. So I'm more than lenient on the series. I complain because I love.
A complaint a day, though, keeps the doctor away: In the "Song-Doesn't-Match-The-Title" gripe department- I kind of liked the Jack White/ Alicia Keys collaboration "Another Way to Die" but didn't we just go through Madonna's "Die Another Day"? It kind of feels like the Broccoli peeps aren't even TRYING anymore with the song names.