AS A kid in the 1970s, when I started to watch James Bond movies, it was during the first serious changing of the guard, between Connery and Moore. And even though the greatest Bonds were behind me (Dr No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger) each one of those early 1970s films had features that were indelibly "Bond". Connery racing across the lunar film set in Diamonds Are Forever, that film's memorably creepy villains Mr Kidd and Mr Wint, the poignant swimming pool murder of the expendable Bond girl, Plenty O'Toole (oh, how we miss those names), and Shirley Bassey's thrilling theme tune; Paul McCartney's own great theme to Live And Let Die, and the exploding baddie Mr Big; Christopher's Lee's triple-nippled and dastardly Scaramanga and his dwarfish accomplice Nick Nack, in The Man With The Golden Gun.

More than the action or locations (the producers should recognise the diminishing returns of jet-setting), it was the music, the villains, the startling sadism behind the killing of so many beautiful women, Q and his gadgets, and the charisma of the star that made a 007 movie stay with you. Not necessarily all in the one movie, but there was always something.

The point of my trip down memory lane is this. In recent years, the Bond producers have been obsessed with changing Bond: first they felt they needed to adapt their character to a world without the Cold War, and in which women were not doormats; then, it was because the Jason Bourne movies had raised the bar for espionage thrillers, adding the weight of well-drawn characters to the action spectacle. With Daniel Craig's first outing as 007, Casino Royale, they seemed to strike the perfect new balance: the film was a lean, mean, modern Bond, both different and - with its luscious femme fatale Vesper Lynd and the many tuxedoed appearances at the card tables - familiar.

Quantum Of Solace, however, is a step too far. An hour after the event, the women, and the villains are already starting to fade; the theme tune didn't even enter my mind, so couldn't leave it; there was no Q, no assistant Q, no gadgets. I'm sitting here recalling the chubby Goldfinger sucked out of his aircraft, Rosa Klebb desperately lunging at Bond with her poisoned shoe: daft as a brush, of course, but the je ne sais quoi of the 007 experience. Memories. I have just seen a very good film. But it's not a Bond film. And that feels strange.

It starts where Casino Royale left off, with Bond having captured the mysterious Mr White, who holds the key to Vesper's death: Vesper whom he loved, but refuses to mourn because he thinks she betrayed him. Director Marc Forster launches immediately into the first of many fabulous action sequences, this one a brutal, raw car chase on a twisting mountain road, Bond having no cigarette-lighter- cum-rocket-launcher to get him out of the fix, relying on nifty driving and one well-timed burst of his gun. It's soon followed by a rooftop pursuit in Siena (not as good as the Tangier scene in The Bourne Ultimatum, which it evokes, but no matter) and a speedboat chase that is full of back-to-basics stunt invention.

In the midst of these, White has escaped, a mole is discovered in M16, and M (Judi Dench) has been unusually fazed by the notion that there is a vast criminal organisation about which she knows nothing and that her top gun is being driven by vengeance rather than duty. Nevertheless, she lets Bond off the leash. And in his customary defiance of jet lag, cash flow and the lack of a travel iron, he travels to Haiti, Austria and Bolivia in pursuit of answers and payback.

The scenario involves a seemingly philanthropic conservationist, Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric), who is actually planning to stage a Bolivian coup, in league with the CIA. Meanwhile Greene's livewire lover Camille (Olga Kurylenko) is harbouring her own desire for revenge, her plans dovetailing with Bond's. 007 seeks the aid of the man he wrongly thought a traitor in the earlier film, Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini), and leads naïve British agent Fields (Gemma Arterton) towards his bed and an early bath.

The most glaring difference between the Bonds of old and the Bourne films was between fantasy, and a semblance of reality. In the Bournes, the consequences - of violence, betrayal, loss - are always felt; the death of Bourne's lover Marie hangs over two entire films. With 007, a succession of lovers and colleagues, as well as enemies, are despatched, with only a quip to mark their passing.

At the same time, you could never say of a Bond film that it had a theme. But with Quantum Of Solace, Forster, his writers and star change all that. Craig, acting his socks off, portrays Bond as a man completely undone by the combination of loss and disillusion, unaware of the number of people he is needlessly terminating to combat his feelings ("If you could avoid killing a possible lead," pleads M, "it would be deeply appreciated"), and who needs to address the sort of human issues that the wafer-thin character has never before faced. A turning point for Bond, as he cradles a dying colleague, is incredibly atypical of the franchise, and surprisingly moving.

This film, then, does have themes: of loss and, particularly, trust. M struggles to trust Bond or, indeed, anyone in her organisation; Bond finds that the only person he can trust, Mathis, is a man he previously had tortured as a traitor; the agent has to come to terms with the honour of the dead Vesper, before he can ever move on. These strands of character development permeate the film as, for the first time, the villains are pushed to the margins by honourable characters, battling for understanding.

Forster is an interesting choice as director, being known not for action movies, but diverse, decidedly art house fare: Monsters Ball, Finding Neverland, The Kite Flyer. He does well, imbuing the action with muscle and panache, orchestrating an excellent set-piece - smart, wry, exciting - in an opera house, and handling his actors and those themes very well.

Yet for all the improvements, something essential is missing. At one point Bond is told: "There is something horribly efficient about you." This could be said of the film itself. Revealingly, in the single moment that Forster falters, he signals the strangely schizophrenic character of his enterprise. And it involves one of those facets that first struck me as a youth: the expendable Bond girl. Here, the director tries to pay homage to the gold-painted Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger: this is, for Quantum Of Solace, the Bond moment, the piece of magic that will uphold the legend. But for some reason his camera won't keep still, it is shy of the dead woman, it lacks - dare one say it - the sadistic relish of old, and the glee in the theatrical. It's as if Forster wants to protect the integrity of his modern spy movie. While doing so, he's buried the Bond, James Bond that we know and love.