Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
A fable so simple, so pure, it feels as if it has existed for hundreds of years, like a brilliant shard of sea glass rendered smooth and elegant through generations of retelling.

Name : Eric Kohn / Alias : indieWIRE
This is a quiet little masterpiece of images, each one rich with meaning, that collectively speak to a universal process.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Like The Red Turtle's shipwrecked protagonist, you have to simply stop fighting the current and go with the flow.

Name : Glenn Kenny / Alias : New York Times
The imagery, in scenes that always unfold slowly, is truly startling, particularly given that the film is almost 90 years old.

Name : Dave Kehr / Alias : Chicago Reader
Flaherty's sticky romanticism can't obscure the power of his images, which speak with an eloquence the intertitles lack.

Name : Tom Keogh / Alias : Seattle Times
A fascinating portrait of South Seas life, albeit embellished.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Flaherty's company are performing their lives and their ancestors' lives and Flaherty's idea of both, for him, for his camera, for the world of '26, for us today, for all time.

Name : Mordaunt Hall / Alias : New York Times
It is a joyful and at the same time a thoroughly artistic contribution to motion pictures.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
[A] reasonably clever genre entry .

Name : Rick Groen / Alias : Globe and Mail
A silly spy may be laughable, but a sulking thug is just a bore.

Name : Ben Kenigsberg / Alias : Time Out
Much has been made of the absence of Bond's signature quips, but there's something else that's absent: interest.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
All dressed up with no particular place to go, this 22nd Bond film tries hard but ends up an underachiever.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Quantum of Solace never really engages you in the mechanical but transporting way the best Bond movies do.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The action and eye candy may be worth the ticket price, but this Bond needs to get back to business.

Name : Ben Mankiewicz / Alias : At the Movies
Mark Forester did a great job.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Quantum of Solace, the 22nd entry in the interminable franchise, is one of the most pointless, chaotic and forgettable of them all. It is also one of the dullest.

Name : Ray Bennett / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
[An] all-out thriller with few Bond touches but plenty of high-octane action.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Revenge is a dish best served with bullets, high explosives and giant rolling flameballs. In Quantum of Solace, James Bond orders the revenge buffet, deluxe.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The stunts are as muscular and the film as handsome to look at as the hero who so ably pulls them off. But the story linking it all together is thin and weak.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
It's ironic: After all these years of surviving everything that has been thrown at him, James Bond is finally being undone by his own team.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Salon.com
Quantum of Solace is best when director Marc Forster allows his star the latitude to explore emotions that, until Craig stepped into the shoes of the character, we didn't know Bond had.

Name : Ben Lyons / Alias : At the Movies
While charm and a quick wit made Connery the best of the Bonds, it's Craig's brute force and Jackie Chan-style stunts that will come to define this latest reincarnation.

Name : Roger Moore / Alias : Orlando Sentinel
It fairly races by, a sexy, sadistic, cruel and crackling thriller that is the shortest Bond film since Goldfinger, and certainly the most brisk.

Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
I mean it as a cockeyed compliment to the reborn Bond franchise, then, when I say that Quantum of Solace is an unnecessarily cramped arena for such an interesting cat.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : Associated Press
Despite his innate intensity, Craig seems a bit. bored, maybe? Underutilized, despite appearing in nearly every frame of the film.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is the least satisfying production since The Living Daylights.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
In the end it's all too fast and too furious - and far too obsessed with exercising its license to thrill.

Name : David Ansen / Alias : Newsweek
Quantum of Solace isn't frivolous or cheesy, but it isn't all that much fun either. Craig is still the right guy for the job, but for his boiling-on-the-inside performance to work, he needs more to play with.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
Director Marc Forster turns out to be a natural as the helmer of a high-energy, high-gloss action film.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Forster, a director of upscale tearjerkers, has no feel for action sequences. The big chases, of which there are several, could all be replaced with a title card reading, 'Insert action here'.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
The result isn't bland, but it's not exactly Bond either.

Name : Bernard Besserglik / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The chemistry [Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell] achieve is a powerful argument for giving Solace its chance on the multiplex circuit.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The New Republic
Mr. White ultimately leads Bond to one Mr. Slate, who in turn leads him to a Mr. Greene. That's right: The global conspiracy this time around isn't SPECTRE, but some rogue wing of the United Colors of Benetton.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Boston Globe
Frankly, Quantum of Solace is just one exasperated dressing down away from being Lethal Weapon 9.

Name : Amy Biancolli / Alias : Houston Chronicle
If you held up your thumb over Daniel Craig's face and took in the mayhem around him, you'd think you were watching The Bourne Simulation rather than the 22nd (and shortest-ever) ode to Ian Fleming's suave government killer.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Quantum of Solace prompts the question: Is revenge the only possible motive for large-scale movie heroism these days?

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
The Quantum of Solace filmmakers have produced a super-serious, often visually incoherent travelogue of revenge and trumped-up angst.

Name : Dre Rivas / Alias : Film.com
Go see Quantum of Solace. Not that you weren't going to anyway.

Name : Tom Maurstad / Alias : Dallas Morning News
The problems can be traced to a screenplay that is stuffed with internecine plot points and shades-of-gray complexities, but little else: no character-sharpening details and none of the wit and charm that buoyed Casino Royale.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
With [this] too-shaken sequel, the Bond market experiences a dip.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The film makes such headlong leaps of motivation and locale that it would take a master spy to decipher why Bond is going where he goes and doing what he does.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : I.E. Weekly
Forster is elbowing us to agree that the franchise in his reins is just another spectacle.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Quantum of Solace benefits from imaginatively conceived action sequences and from a director, Marc Forster, who knows how to film them.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
If the staging were as witty as the plotting, Quantum of Solace might have been a corker like Casino Royale.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Not every director is well-suited to Bondland. "There's something horribly efficient about you," Kurylenko says to Craig at one point. The same goes for the film.

Name : Derek Elley / Alias : Variety
Stripped of Royale's humor, elegance and reinvented old-school stylishness, Quantum has little left except its plot, which is rudimentary and slightly barmy, in the line of the Roger Moore pics of the '70s and '80s.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
There isn't much plot between the action set pieces, and precious little character development beyond Craig's and Dench's continuing evolution.

Name : Wally Hammond / Alias : Time Out
A slightly disappointing, furiously-paced, hi-tech, slash-and-burn sequel to the more leisurely, luxurious first 'reboot', 'Casino Royale'.

Name : Robert Wilonsky / Alias : Village Voice
If nothing else, there's no need to worry about where Quantum of Solace fits in the Bond pantheon - it's easily one of the worst.

Name : Mark Rahner / Alias : Seattle Times
Marc Forster seems like a counterintuitive choice to direct an action spectacle. But any doubts I might have had flew out the window and splattered onto the hood of a parked car during an early, hellacious brawl.

Name : Noah Berlatsky / Alias : Chicago Reader
A few years back, the easy sexism and narcissism of the James Bond series looked dated to the point of obsolescence, but Quantum of Solace proves that a revenge motive is just what's needed to rejuvenate all the Bond cliches.

Name : Keith Phipps / Alias : AV Club
Quantum is content merely to be the second episode in what's shaping up to be a viable series, good enough but disappointing for those expecting greatness.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Quantum of Solace is a model of mediocrity, even though Daniel Craig gives his all to a production that doesn't deserve him.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Quantum - the 22d 'official' Bond picture, 24th including the rogue Bonds - is never less than engaging.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Quantum of Solace is too savage for family entertainment, but, as a study in headlong desperation, it's easier to believe in than many more ponderous films.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Quantum of Solace won't trust its own darker instincts. It delivers the popcorn goods, but it ignores the poison eating at Bond's insides. Killer mistake.

Name : Roger Ebert / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
I repeat: James Bond is not an action hero! Leave the action to your Jason Bournes. This is a swampy old world. The deeper we sink in, the more we need James Bond to stand above it.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Enjoy Quantum of Solace for what it is: a high-octane, winning installment of the Bond series that hits the ground running and never lets up.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Forster is indeed a fine director, but he's hardly a specialist in action films, and it shows. He can't quite keep things moving fast enough to speed past the absurdity of the premise.