Thursday
13Nov2008
Movie Review - 'Quantum of Solace'
Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 11:47PM | Quantum of Solace
Starring Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, and Judi Dench  |
Picking up almost exactly where
Casino Royale leaves off, the new James Bond
film,
Quantum of Solace, moves at breakneck speed,
taking 007 from Europe to South America on the trail of Vesper Lynd's killer.
Bond would be a bit boring if he were only after revenge, so more international
intrigue pops up, forcing him into action to save the world at large first.Perhaps even more stripped down than its predecessor, Quantum of Solace borrows more from The Bourne Ultimatum than the collected works of Bonds Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, and Brosnan. In fact, a couple of fight scenes in the film's first and rather breathless 25 minutes are remarkably similar to the third Bourne movie. But once it finds its way, once Solace gets you hooked into yet another preposterous story of well-to-do playboys who could destroy the world with a flick of the wrist, it's actually a pretty good action flick, if that's what you want.
But the further I get away from the moodiness of it - Bond allowing the death of Vesper Lynd dictate his actions - the less I buy it. Unfortunately, I think the moodiness is what director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland) really wants to sell us. He wants to complicate 007, and hand-to-hand combat, while exhilarating to watch, hardly does the trick. It's a curious thing, because what Daniel Craig does best in this series, and in fact, what sets him apart from the other Bonds, is his total remorselessness while he's on the clock. Countering that stoic presence with love and loss is a difficult thing to make work, and when Forster decides to explore the inner Bond, we lose some interest.
The plot concerns 007 stopping a mysterious businessman named Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), who wants to control the world's most precious natural resource. No, he's not an oil barron; he wants the world's water supply. And he starts by working with a government intelligence agency (which shall remain nameless) to depose Bolivia's current president and install a military puppet, who will then sign over a huge percentage of the country's undeveloped land to Greene. What's he doing with the land? Re-routing the impoverished nation's water there, of course. Now, the question becomes, what will he do with all of it?
That doesn't overly concern the film because once the evil is established we know Bond will be dispatched to find Greene and take him out. The joy of these movies is in the details rather than the grand scheme, and on that basis, Quantum of Solace gets it right most of the time. There's a gorgeous Bond girl (Olga Kurylenko from Hitman), some wonderful locations you've never seen before, one terrific tuxedoed sequence in the middle, and some great stunt work.
Tackling a James Bond movie is different than it is for a lot of films, even franchises. The character has had so many peaks and valleys in 45 years, and you can't help but measure each new movie up against all the old ones. Where does this rank? Where does Craig rank? The important thing to remember here is that Quantum of Solace is just part of a dramatic shift in the character. This is a new world Bond, less refined and more hard knocks. They've definitely got the right guy for the job in Daniel Craig. The stories and the action suit him very well or vice versa.
This film feels like it's part of a series in a way that the others do not. It feels like it's pointing somewhere. Obviously, we know we're getting another 007 movie, but really for the first time, there appears to be a thread linking Casino Royale to this and linking this to whatever's next. The new Bond model is built as a trilogy or quadrilogy. So saying it's better or worse than films that don't have that structure is kind of hard to do. It's still a more consistent film than a lot of them, though I have a hunch that when we look back on the Daniel Craig era, this might be the weak link.
Reader Comments (7)
There's been a lot of talk about this being the first back to back Bond storyline, and that's mostly accurate, but the pre-credit sequence in Diamonds Are Forever has Connery, back as Bond, hunting Blofeld to avenge the death of his (George Lazenby's) wife Tracey in the immediate prior film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. One of Moore's pictures opened the same way, with Bond killing Blofeld after visiting Tracey's grave, although the series had lost the rights to the Blofeld character, so it was just a bald weasel in a wheelchair with a pet cat.
James Bond is not an action hero. but mediocre directors will try to make him become, like in this new flick. Create something new, fucking Hollywood is living of the past and is remaking it in a very shitty way.
A disappointment!
Chaotic story line, so many scene cuts in this movie, I was bleeding.
Directors hide behind scene cuts when a scene cannot stand on its own. In this case probably the worst Bond movie in franchise history.
This movie is flawed from the opening sound track to the final scene. What happened? Bad choices throughout. My thought while watching this jig saw puzzle, is the Producer/Director isn’t really even a fan of the franchise.
For me, Bond is more than throwing up a fight scene, car chase, boat chase, and girl. Bond is nuanced with eccentric characters, anticipation, action, dry wit and humor. The dialogue was WEAK.
Casino has soul; this movie was erratic and built like an erector set. More set locations are not a substitute for a developed screenplay. Oh, you have to appreciate that THE BAD GUY IS NOW THE U.S...
Now I understand why this movie has done as well as it has in China.
Next!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
'Quadrilogy' isn't a word.
But it is movie slang.
Easily the worst Bond movie I've seen yet.
It was so boring and predictable I almost fell asleep.
Yeah it was really hard to follow. I got the gist of the guy trying to control the water source, but he was in a different place every 30 seconds for who knows why. The scenes were very very short and the car chase at the beginning, I couldn't tell what I was looking at! Casino Royale was way better.