I’ve posted before about my high degree of anticipation for this year’s new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. After the daring, exhilarating masterpiece that was Casino Royale and Daniel Craig’s deep, dark turn as the famous superspy, Heather and I have been waiting with great excitement for the follow-up. Upon its release a couple weeks ago, the movie was met with good, but not great, reviews. Both my brother and my sister-in-law saw the movie during it’s opening weekend, and they both echoed the common summary of the critics – good movie, but nowhere near what Casino Royale was. Thus, when we finally headed to the theater to take it in Saturday, my expectations had been somewhat lowered. Perhaps that was a good thing, because though Quantum of Solace isn’t nearly as good as it’s predecessor, it's still a terrific movie that provides a bit of closure (or, rather, a “quantum of solace”) to Bond’s origin story and sets the stage for the future of the franchise.Daniel Craig returns as Bond as the movie picks up just minutes after the ending of Casino, a first for the series. We enter the story in the middle of a frenetic and violent car chase as Bond brings in Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), the lead he had captured at the end of the last film, for questioning. Bond is seeking answers regarding his Casino love interest Vesper Lynd, who was blackmailed into betraying him to save her boyfriend. With M (Judi Dench) keeping close watch, concerned that Bond’s desire for revenge will overshadow his duty, he follows a series of leads that takes him to business mogul Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) and the mysterious organization Quantum that seems to have eyes around every corner. Allying himself with a mysterious woman named Camille (Olga Kurylenko) and his old contact Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini), he seeks to uncover the truth about Vesper while delving into an organization that threatens the stability of England and the rest of the world.
Once again, Craig hits it out of the park as 007. A character that had descended into caricature over the course of 20 (entertaining in their own right) films is once again explored in much the way Ian Fleming wrote him almost 50 years ago – a coldly efficient killer with a duty to country and strange allure. Craig brilliantly portrays a Bond broken by lost love but channeling the devastation into a brutal rage contained behind an almost robotic exterior. Quantum completes the origin story begun in Casino Royale, and by the time the credits roll we have a sense of who this Bond is and what makes him tick. The movie is also successful as an action film – it’s brief 100 minute running time is loaded with near constant action, expertly staged and frantically shot. Director Marc Forster, more well known for art-house fare such as Finding Neverland and Monster’s Ball, proves a capable captain at the helm of the ship, keeping the movie tightly focused and never boring. The supporting cast is good, especially the holdovers from the previous film such as Giannini and Jeffrey Wright’s Felix Leiter. Amalric is good, but Greene lacks the interest and magnetism of Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre. Similarly, Kurylenko’s Camille is a strong, if underexplored, character, but she can’t hold a candle to Eva Green’s Vesper. She’s not supposed to – after all, despite the presence of two Bond girls (Gemma Arterton joins the cast as a British support agent), Vesper is in a way the strongest female presence in the film, despite never appearing onscreen. That, perhaps, is the best indication I can give as to what to expect from Quantum. The film functions as an entertaining though unspectacular epilogue to Casino Royale, not the groundbreaking success that film was (how could it be?) but a great addition to the new Bond canon nonetheless. It will be interesting to see how the franchise breaks into new territory in the next outing. Until then, Bond fans, go in with the right expectations, and you’ll enjoy this one immensely. - ***1/2 (out of 4)
Quantum of Solace is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sexual content.
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10 comments:
You liked it considerably more than did I. I thought the action was solid and the acting good (not including the Bond girl), but the plot was one of the dumbest ones I have ever seen, and the villain quite weak. Without spoiling it too much for anyone, are we seriously supposed to think that the best idea that the villain has to gain power and influence is to double utility bills? I (and the two friends I went with, as well as every other friend who saw it) was very disappointed with the film and think that they better get a better writer next time or the Bond franchise will be destroyed (if it wasn't already, as was Michael Medved's fear in his review of the movie).
Well, Purvis, Wade, and Haggis are the same scribes who penned the Casino Royale screenplay, so I wouldn't fault them here. Was Greene a "Bond villian" in the typical sense? No. However, the focus of the Craig films has been the genesis of the Bond character - the villains are only means to that end. After all, Le Chiffre didn't even have an evil scheme in the traditional Bond sense - he was merely trying to recoup his losses and stay in business. As I said, I think my feelings for the movie benefited from tempered expectations, but I think the movie did a good job of finishing the character arc of Casino Royale, which is demonstrating why Bond is the way he is.
And per Medved, I'd say that if a CGI Pierce Brosnan surfing across an arctic wave didn't destroy the Bond franchise, then I think it can survive this - a good, but not great, film.
Yeah, the saving grace is that the main point to this film (which should have been called Casino Royale II) was the genesis of Bond. It's just unfortunate that it took two movies to tell a story which should have just taken one to tell. That was a weak point of it as well; if I hadn't had just watched CR recently, I would have been pretty lost. A movie (even a sequel) should stand alone better than it did.
As I told one person, I found little SOLACE in the great action scenes when compared with the minuscule QUANTUM of a plot. :) I'm hoping now that they got the Bond Begins stuff behind them, they can get back to the regularly scheduled programming.
Yeah, nobody should see this without having seen Casino Royale, and this is the only Bond movie for which another film is a prerequisite. I guess I just found the whole "Bond begins" thing (well put, since CR reminded me so much of Batman Begins in tone and theme) more interesting than you did.
Oh, I found the Bond Begins stuff interesting, I just thought they could have chosen better plots to fill around it. I agree, the scheme with Le Chiffre was bogus as well.
Out of curiosity, have you read any of the Fleming novels? If so, what do you think of them?
No, I have not.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons we differ here. I'm a fan of the novels, and Craig's Bond from the past two movies is the closest of any of the movie Bonds to the character Fleming wrote. My fondness for this version of the character probably makes me more apt to overlook QoS's flaws.
It was my understanding that QoS was the first Bond film not based on a Fleming novel. Is that not true?
No, not by a long shot. The last movie to be based on a full-fledged bond novel was Moonraker, until the producers made Casino Royale, which is based on Fleming's first (and in my opinion, one of his best) novel. Octopussy and The Living Daylights were very loosely based on Fleming short stories. A couple other short story titles have been used (such as QoS), but they have no correlation to the original stories. Basically, every film from the end of the Moore era through the Brosnan era was an original story.
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