Quantum of Solace

Daniel Craig is back in his second rugged, roughed-up turn as James Bond, which picks up right where to "Casino Royale" left off. Bond is on a mission of revenge over the death of Vesper, and his rogue investigation takes him to the heart of the mysterious "Quantum" organization (the 21st century answer to SPECTRE?) and a conspiracy to hijack the world's natural resources. Marc Forster executes the action scenes with adequate skill and brings the film in under two hours (is that a first for a modern Bond picture?). Mathieu Amalric is a superb actor but an underwhelming international supervillain, and Olga Kurylenko gets Bond Girl status this time. The bare-bones single-disc edition includes a music video. For the featurettes, look to the two-disc special edition DVD and the Blu-ray edition (neither of which I received in time to review).