Overall 3/5
Director: Marc Forster
Genre: Action/Adventure
Running time: 106'

The leanest and meanest version of the longest-serving MI6 agent in cinema returns to the screens in the leanest and meanest Bond film ever. Four minutes shorter than Dr. No, and 39 minutes shorter than Casino Royale, its immediate predecessor, Quantum of Solace, is a breathless, and even, at times, tiring, chain of hugely impressive action sequences packed in a plot about a relentless revenge mission. Bond is after the men and the organisation that took Vesper Lynd away from him in Casino Royale and he is in no mood to take prisoners, either onscreen or in the packed rows of seats in theatres.

Quantum of Solace has no time to stop and delve in the elegance and wit which defined the previous film, which effectively rebooted the franchise; watching it is rewarding but also at times a punishing experience. The punishment of the breakneck speed and pain involved in the series of improbable stunts is felt by the audience, but it does not seem to bother Bond himself. As played by the hugely impressive Daniel Craig, he is an efficient killing machine who can credibly survive almost anything and who does not have the time for the fluff of shaken-not-stirred-martinis, or even, bizarrely, for bedding his sultry female screen companion.

The action picks up more or less at the same spot where we left Bond at the end of Casino Royale. Bond's Aston Martin is chased and shot at as Bond tries to smuggle Mr White (Jesper Christensen), his captive from the last scene of the previous film, to an MI6 hideout where Bond and M (Judy Dench) will interrogate him about the shady omnipotent organisation he seems to be in. As per his words, it "is everywhere, but you haven't even heard of it", and goes to prove it in a most unexpected and violent fashion.

The clues about said organisation take Bond to Port-au-Prince in Haiti where he bumps into a spirited Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who, by accident, leads Bond to her very suspicious-looking lover Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric). Using a Greenpeace-type organisation as a front, he proposes to reinstate a Bolivian general, Medrano (Joaquin Cosio), as president in exchange for a piece of land in the Bolivian desert. It soon transpires that Greene is a prominent member of the same organisation that Bond and M had stumbled upon via Mr White, and as soon as this is established, Bond starts honing in on him like a merciless heat-seeking missile. This takes him to a catalogue of typical Bondian-posh locations, the highlight being an ultramodern opera production of Tosca in Austria, which serves as a canvas for a virtuoso-shot action sequence.

Director Marc Forster and cinematographer Robert Schaefer achieve a feel of proficiency and functionality that is stripped of any humorous flourishes and this reminds us uncannily of the Jason Bourne trilogy. It would be unjust to call this film The Bond Identity, but it is by a mile the most unrelentingly action-orientated in the entire history of the series and not everyone might be prepared for this.

Quantum of Solace is not as good as Casino Royale; it is more of an efficient and commendable companion to the latter, which completes Bond's journey to being a complete character for years to follow. I hope it serves as a bridge to a new adventure of the ambition and stature of Casino Royal; for the time being it gives us, however, ample reassurance that Bond is alive and well, looking and doing better than ever.