Quantum of Solace: Great Action, Confusing Plot

So after I finally decided to try watching Casino Royale finding Daniel Craig's James Bond to be alright, it naturally seemed to make sense to watch the other films he did, of which there are currently two others: Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. Since it was the next installment in the series it seemed the next logical step, so I opted to ignore the warnings that it was the weakest of Craig's films. I really wanted to like this one, but the best I can say is that it was okay.

This is not really the fault of any of the cast or crew. Craig still makes a great Bond and the rest of the cast do a reasonable job. It was nice that they had some continuity, with the events of Casino Royale affecting how Bond behaves here. Judi Dench is still a good choice for M. I even enjoyed the new love interest Camille (Olga Kurylenko). Everyone seems to give it their all, it's just I was not so sure about the script.

To me, the story seemed much too needlessly convoluted and confusing. From what I could understand, M is the victim of an attempted assassination and Bond has been trying to get information on the people responsible but keeps having to kill every man he captures with some connection. Camille is some sort of intelligence person who also wants to get vengeance because these people did some horrible things to her in the past and there is a bad buy named Dominic Greene who is in league with the CIA and Bond wants to get revenge because his girlfriend got killed. It was a mess.

The one redeeming feature is that there are some great action scenes. There are plenty of creative sequences with lots of gripping and tense action. That one early scene with the boat chase I'd swear drew straight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The only trouble is that some of them are edited really quickly which makes it hard to tell what is happening. Also, a few good action scenes do not save a problematic script.

Quantum of Solace is definitely not as good as Casino Royale, though to be fair I should have seen it coming given that was what I was always told. It is a reasonable effort, and it looks like people are trying their best, but ultimately the script is just too needlessly convoluted to keep you going. I do, however, still plan to check out Skyfall. I have been told that one was really good, even better than Casino Royale, so hopefully it will deliver.