Kate, Hannah and I went to see The Quantum of Solace at the Cinerama this evening. After the success of Casino Royale, I had great hopes for it. Sadly, no. Muddled plot, unmemorable characters (except for Bond and M), and a ridiculous reliance on special effects. The film does set some kind of record for the variety of chases: a car chase, a running-across-the-rooftops chase, a boat chase, and a plane chase. Each raises the improbability level a notch: picking a random beat-up old boat in a harbour and finding that it had a supercharged engine that could outperform the bad guys, then renting a decrepit old DC-3 in the Bolivian desert and performing low-level aerobatics in narrow canyons that would be the envy of Top Gun – and without the wings coming off. That was just silly. On the plus side, the computer user interface in use at MI6 takes the design from Minority Report and raises the bar a couple of notches.