James Bond news - Bond is Bourne again - 2008

For those of you desperate for the new Bond movie to open in cinemas, good news – the car chase is awesome.

Forget whether Daniel Craig is settling into the role, don’t worry about how the genre has moved forward, and just be happy the Aston drive in Quantum of Solace lasts longer than in Casino Royale.
The new movie starts moments after the last film left off and plunges you straight into a jaw-dropping chase through the mountains of Tuscany – Bond in his disintegrating DBS being hounded down by henchmen in crap saloon cars.

We’re not going to ruin the plot for you – there are millions of other websites happy to do that for you (cheers, Empire) – but this opening DBS scene sets you up nicely for a film that, visually at least, is spectacular.

Watch the trailer (below) and you’ll get the idea – look for the moment Bond falls off some scaffolding through a glass roof, that one’s worth the ticket price on its own.

Despite the gripping visual effects, though, something wasn’t right. The film was harder work than it needed to be and some of the great dialogue that really helped build Bond’s ‘new’ character in Casino Royale seemed to have been dumped in favour of explosions and action scenes. Whether you’ll like it or not depends on whether you think Bond is primarily about wit or guns. And if it is the latter, maybe it’s a Bourne film you want anyway.

But Craig’s performance is impressive and this new generation of Bond is still miles ahead of the last-of-the-Brosnan fantastical cheese. Apart from a few details (surely the MI6 headquarters are more like local council offices than a Minority Report set?) you don’t have to suspend your disbelief that much.

The product placement’s mostly in check too, but car fans will notice a Ford connection on most of the vehicles in the film – everything has a badge from the old PAG group.

The most noticeable among these is the Ford Ka cameo, driven by one of the evil boss’ mistresses. Can you imagine a hot girl sleeping with criminal royalty and being happy with an economical little city car as a runabout? Neither can we.

But, as we said, the Aston’s brilliant and visually the film’s worth an evening with a bag of popcorn. Like Casino Royale, you’ll leave the cinema wanting to watch the next one, but this time you might wonder whether the writers have tried a bit too hard to stamp out some of the old Bond clichés. Better than Jason Bourne? You decide.

Quantum of Solace is on screens nationwide from October 31.