AFTER the success of Casino Royale, beloved of critics and fans alike, the brains behind Bond have their work cut out with this new instalment.

Since the afore-mentioned reinvention, Bourne has appeared in an impressive third film, and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight has taken serious action to a new level, breaking world box office records.

And so the Broccolis have turned to Swiss director Marc Forster, known for Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner, to hopefully combine art with commerce, and elevate the franchise to new levels of acclaim.

He begins well with the traditional pre-credits sequence, basically a car chase, but cut in such a swift, no nonsense fashion that it takes an audience’s breath away. Everything happens in a semblance of real time, so don’t expect any slow-mo or re-runs of what exactly just whizzed past your eyeballs.

After the underwhelming theme song, Another Way to Die by Jack White and Alicia Keys, we’re off on a whistle stop tour of the world whilst Bond (Daniel Craig) investigates the organisation which inadvertently caused the death of his beloved Vesper Lynd. Along the way, he picks up a vengeful and literally scarred feisty female (the gorgeous Olga Kurylenko), has a little rumpy pumpy with Agent Fields (Gemma Arterton, wasted in a tiny role) and manages to once again ostracise and infuriate M (Judi Dench), who must clear away the dead bodies he leaves in his wake. In these demanding times, audiences want something which blows their socks off in a new way. Quantum of Solace, generally, doesn’t achieve this.

The one thing no one wants to have to mention is Bourne, again, but it’s impossible not to see echoes of trilogy’s brilliance in Quantum’s rooftop chase sequence, the brutal hand-to-hand combat, or the tracking shot which traces Bond’s leap across an alley from one building into another. There are some fantastic parts of the whole, though. The first twenty minutes are excellent, and the section which merges a performance of Tosca with Bond’s infiltration of the baddies’ secret conversation is stunningly realised.

Verisimilitude plot-wise is also a decision which reaps rewards. Those increasingly crucial commodities oil and water are at the root of motivations of the key criminal, the ironically named environmentalist Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric). Sense of place and time is beautifully established, too, with the foreign secretary and mentions of the PM meshed into M’s daily manoeuvrings, and each location meriting its own specific lettering. We can remain full of optimism for Bond’s future filmic outings because of the typically rock solid work of Mr Craig. Once viewed as a risk, now his name’s above the titles, and he’s the whole shebang’s saving grace.

His brutal and brilliant hero can be relied on because, no matter what else he gets up to, he’ll remain loyal to Queen and country, even when they lose faith. Which, despite Quantum’s little blips, we won’t do with him.