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Though not as solid as Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace is nonetheless a hell of a ride.

The answer to your first question is: No, Quantum of Solace is not as good as Casino Royale. It’s less interested in material goods, doesn’t much care for exotic locales (much of the film is set in Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere), and its plot unfolds whip crack fast, versus the more leisurely, measured mystery of its predecessor. Its action, too, is more interested in kinetic energy. Where Casino Royale’s action gradually builds itself into stunning, breathless sequences, Quantum gives us brief bursts of quick-cut violence.

But there’s a flipside to that. Quantum is a trim, fast-paced piece of work, a Bond experience that eschews its more extravagant tropes for something altogether leaner. I suspect many comparisons will be made to the Bourne movies, but Quantum may have more in common with a Mamet movie: the players all know what they’re doing, and they’re sure as hell not going to sit around explaining it to each other. The audience is expected to keep up.

Quantum is a direct sequel to Royale: James Bond (Daniel Craig) is hot on the trail of Quantum, the shadowy organization responsible for the death of Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), his love and reluctant double agent. He picks up the scent of Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a jet setting CEO whose eco-friendly pose masks his true talent at brokering coups and revolutions for Quantum‘s clients.

When Bond finds him, Greene is cutting a deal with the loathsome General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio) to give him the ruling seat in Bolivia. In Greene’s tow is the beautiful and volatile Camille (Olga Kurylenko), a broken woman as obsessed with revenge as Bond. Bond’s troubles grow when the CIA and his own MI6 reveal themselves to have a distressingly pragmatic view of Greene’s actions and associates.

There’s passing mention of current events littered throughout Quantum—global warming, the war in Iraq, America and England’s historic misadventures in carving out nations. None of these are mentioned to score cheap political points, but rather to point out the simple truth that rash, violent or deceptive actions have unintended and often far-reaching consequences—a lesson the characters in Quantum of Solace learn (or don’t) to their peril.

That, if anything else, is the moral core of Quantum: no one, not even Bond, has anything like a pure motive. His desire for selfish revenge may be understandable and honest after a fashion, but it’s hardly more defensible than his government’s willingness to cut deals with butchers and thieves to keep the oil coming. The who-can-you-trust angle is a cornerstone of the spy story, but the returning writing team of Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade give it a recognizably human face. As with Casino Royale, it’s the people that move this plot, not the other way around.

And the cast is what sells it, amidst the too-quick action and breakneck exposition. Craig cuts through every scene, rendered still and intense by boundless rage. Kurylenko, while not the actress Eva Green is, does a lot with a little: she’s as filled with rage as Bond, but less experienced in venting it. Judi Dench’s M (or “Mum“) remains steely and formidable even when trapped between the seemingly uncontrollable Bond and an unfeeling, uncaring British bureaucracy.

I began this review with a comparison, a practice I try to avoid. But I compared Quantum of Solace to its predecessor not out of some fan boy instinct to keep a scorecard, but because Casino Royale was so very impressive. Wade, Purvis, Haggis, Craig and the rest took broke the quintessential spy story of the 20th century down to its component parts and constructed something that functioned in this century—and created, not just a great Bond movie, but simply a great movie, one that transitioned from exceptional action to captivating intrigue to well-wrought characterization as deftly as its protagonist did. I named Royale my number 2 movie of 2006. In retrospect, I think I was conservative.

So I went into Quantum of Solace wanting to see if that team, and director Marc Forster, could do it again. Was Royale a fluke, or were we really seeing the beginning of a new legacy? It seems we have the latter. Quantum of Solace has more missteps than its predecessor, and Forster is not comfortable enough with extended action sequences to pull them off as expertly as he needs to. But Quantum is unusually strong despite its flaws, and ends on a surprisingly powerful flourish. It’s a hell of a thing to watch.

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