Bond, James Bond is much darker and more dangerous now and this time he’s out for revenge. Gone are the days of the one raised eyebrow, the sardonic quips and double entendre, the smooth seduction of Bond Girls with flirty names like Pussy Galore and Christmas Jones. In Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig as Bond means business – serious business, robbing the film and the franchise of its characteristic fun and making it look like the myriad other super agent action films out there. James Bond and Jason Bourne are now interchangeable.

Mark Forseter (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, The Kite Runner) is the solemn director behind this violent, frenetic and confusing globe trot in which Bond hits Austria, Haiti, Bolivia, Italy and a few other sundry countries. Picking up where Casino Royale left off, Bond is trying to find the truth about his late lover Vesper, who betrayed him in the last film. He is led to the evil villain Mathieu Amalric, who runs a mysterious criminal organization called Quantum. If you’ve seen The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, you’ll find it particularly difficult to get used to him up and out of his wheel chair and communicating with more than one eyelid. Because there must always be an exotic love interest, the intriguing Olga Kurylenko is woven in as Camille, who has revenge issues that interconnect with Bond’s. Aside from a clever moment at the opera and a fight scene that takes place on towering scaffolding, there is little that is memorable, little we haven’t seen before. The running “joke” of the film is that Bond keeps killing suspects before they can be questioned. Uproarious.

Paul Haggis (Crash, Letters from Iwo Jima, In the Valley of Elah) co-wrote the script. He’s never been known for light-hearted fun, but at least in Casino Royale, the first Bond film starring Daniel Craig, Haggis came up with some very original and provocative scenes, such as the collapse of a Venetian villa and Bond being tortured stark naked. While action-loving hombres seem to be content with this latest edition, many others will be left cold and wondering, “What’s with the awkward title?”

Rated PG-13.

Lisa Johnson Mandell

Want to 007 your way behind-the-scenes of the making of Quantum? GossipSauce can take you there! And while you're there, be sure to check out what they had to say about whether Bond is worth seeing or skipping.