Customer Reviews

Quantum Of Solace: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

David Arnold's soundtrack to QUANTUM OF SOLACE is not up to his exceptional CASINO ROYALE. It is rather repetitive, somewhat innovative yet unfortunately strangely mundane and uninspiring. There were many complaints about the sparse use of The James Bond Theme in CASINO ROYALE. Well, you can barley find it on this soundtrack. It is there, interwoven, interpolated or whatever but essentially it is missing. I think many of us were led to believe that the use of The James Bond Theme would be more prominent since the finale of CASINO ROYALE ended in such a grand display of the theme and James Bond was now ready to return musically to his roots but continue with the new found realism in the next film. Unfortunately that is not the case, at least musically speaking. Too bad, David Arnold's score for CASINO ROYALE was pure genius.

David Arnold's soundtrack to QUANTUM OF SOLACE is a good companion and followup to his provocative soundtrack to CASINO ROYALE. Really, this picks up where CASINO ROYALE ended. It has the same sound, mood and contemplative nature that CASINO ROYALE did. It also does not focus on The James Bond Theme but refers to in it an impressionistic manner. This is an excellent soundtrack.

I have to agree with others who found this score uninspiring and somewhat derivative. It is certainly not in the same league as Arnold's previous score for Casino Royale, which I personally rank as his best work so far on a Bond film. I have not seen the film yet and so cannot say how the music works in the context of the film. But the CD is dominated by hard-driving action music. And while that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, the action music as presented here lacks variety. And some of the other, non-action cues featured on the CD are so short that they are hardly worth including. And the less said about the god-awful theme song the better.

Quantum of Solace is one of my favorite movies and one of the things I like the most about it is the music. I'm currently using a 13 star system, the more stars a song gets the more I like it. Only 2% of the music in my collection have earned a 13 star rating. Here's how I rated the songs in this album:

1: *"Time to Get Out," 7 out of 13 stars

2: *"The Palio" 6 out of 13 stars

3: *"Inside Man" 13 out of 13 stars. What an awesome theme!! It's too bad it's only 38 seconds, this one seriously needs an extended version.

4: *"Bond in Haiti" 6 out of 13 stars

5: *"Somebody Wants to Kill You" 6 out of 13 stars

6: *"Green & Camille" 6 out of 13 stars

7: *"Pursuit at Port Au Prince" 6 out of 13 stars

8: *"No Interest in Dominic Greene," 13 out of 13 stars. So mysterious, so beautiful.

9: *"Night at the Opera" 13 out of 13 stars. My favorite track in this album. When I think of Bond, I think of this track.

10: *"Restrict Bond's Movements" 10 out of 13 stars

11: *"Talamone" 10 out of 13 stars

12: *"What's Keeping You Awake" 6 out of 13 stars, but a great track to sleep with.

13: *"Bolivian Taxi Ride" 9 out of 13 stars

14: *"Field Trip" 13 out of 13 stars, but so short :(

15: *"Forgive Yourself" 6 out of 13 stars

16: *"DC3" 7 out of 13 stars

17: *"Target Terminated" 6 out of 13 stars

18: *"Camille's Story" 6 out of 13 stars. Another track that's great to sleep with.

19. *"Oil Fields" 10 out of 13 stars

20: *"Have You Ever Killed Someone?" 11 out of 13 stars

21: *"Perla De Las Dunas" 6 out of 13 stars

22: *"The Dead Don't Care About Vengeance" 10 out of 13 stars

23: *"I Never Left" 8 out of 13 stars

24: *"Another Way to Die" 13 out of 13 stars. I love this one, I don't understand why so many don't like it...

Over the years I've purchased a copy of all the bond soundtracks available, including Casino Royale, despite the fact that the theme song wasn't included on the soundtrack. (I still can't believe that they did this. If you're spending $30 on a CD based on a movie then you should get the whole score. Not including the title track was a poor marketing exercise, intended to help sell CD singles)

Quantum of Solace will be the first 007 score that I won't be buying.

One of the things that helped Casino Royale was that the score was excellent. Most Bond scores are essentially derivatives of two themes - the main title song of the movie, and a love theme. In Quantum of Solace the title song is in my opinion, the worst bond song ever. Unfortunately the rest of the score is just as unmemorable. I've enjoyed all of the other scores by David Arnold since he took over in 1997, (Particularly Tomorrow Never Dies, which had excellent music from start to finish) but even by current movie standards this score just isn't inspiring.

But it's when you compare this soundtrack to previous Bond movies that it suffers the most. Live and Let Die, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice... all those movies had brilliant scores, and fantastic theme songs. The soundtrack from Quantum of Solace just isn't in the same league. Hopefully the music in the next Bond movie sounds like it belongs in a Bond movie.

After seeing the movie I wanted to get the soundtrack mainly because of the music over the ending credits. Best I can tell, it's not here. So I'm holding off from buying a soundtrack that appears not to have the one song I know I want. None of the clips sounds like the closing music which was cool and traditional Bond.

Musically speaking this is bottom of the barrel Bond. And David Arnold started out with such promise with TOMORROW NEVER DIES. He has been on the downward slide ever since. This is rock bottom bad. It does not remotely sound like a James Bond soundtrack. It sounds like it got inspiration from MISSION IMPOSSIBLE II, but that was much better. Goodbye Mister Bond. You have heard better days.

I have really gotten into movie soundtracks lately, and I just bought this one because I went out on a limb and bought the Casino Royale soundtrack and really liked it. This soundtrack is just like the movie. Quantum of Solace was a direct sequel to Casino Royale, and as a movie it was very good. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite AS good as Casino Royale, and many people were disappointed. This soundtrack is the same way. It's very good, but just not quite as good as Casino Royale. If you are a fan of the movies and Casino Royale's soundtrack, you will like it.

It's not as good as Casino Royale, but it's a very good soundtrack - it's something new. Saying it's horrible just because there's no main theme would be stupid, even if it was true, which it's not - in case you're deaf, the leitmotif is repeated through the whole album, for instance in tracks 7, 9 or 18, and because it's usually using the melody of the theme song, it's not as expressive as in other bond soundtracks (those who've heard Another way to die know what I mean). The music is more moody and melancholy, but other parts have a really good pace. In short, if you liked the previous bond soundtracks by david arnold, definitely buy it!

I'm really enjoying this soundtrack. Even more than the one for Casino Royale.

A few standout tracks for me are 3, 7, 12, 18.

I don't mind that the James Bond theme shows up only a few times. I think this soundtrack has plenty of Bond style.