Release Date: November 14, 2008 Studio: Sony Pictures MPAA Rating: PG-13 Genre: Action •
Adventure Director: Marc Forster Writers: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis Cast: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Gemma Arterton, Jeffrey Wright Synopsis: James Bond is back, baby!
In QUANTUM OF SOLACE Agent 007 is out to avenge the death of his love from the last Bond film, discovering the secret organization known as QUANTUM.
Traveling to Haiti, Austria, Italy and South America, Bond meets the beautiful and deadly Camile and unravels the sinister plot of one Dominic Greene in this non-stop action thriller. The Review: QUANTUM OF SOLACE, the 22nd entry in the nigh-unstoppable James Bond franchise hits theatres not with the bang of the opening gun barrel animation we’ve come to expect, but with a high speed chase somewhere in Northern Italy. British agent 007 (Daniel Craig) is careening through the mountain top tunnels in his Aston Martin DBS V12 hotly pursued by the bad guys.
Does Bond out-manuever and out-drive them ?
Do I have to ask?
Picking up the story pieces from the previous film (in a departure for the series), James still burns over the loss of his lady love Vesper Lynd and after the chase, he pulls Mr. White (Jesper Christensen)from CASINO ROYALE out of the battered car’s boot (or trunk, for you Yankees).
Later, White's tied to a chair and M (Judi Dench) steps out of the shadows to threaten him.
“You don’t understand, “ he says confidently.
“We have people everywhere.”
“Everywhere.”
With that, one of M’s lieutenants pulls out a pistol. He begins shooting wildly and I end my plot description.
As Bond, James Bond, I admired Daniel Craig’s roughshod intensity. Gone is the roguish charm of Sean Connery, the smirking quips of Roger Moore and the urbane slickness of Pierce Brosnan. Craig has the face of a boxer, steely blue eyes blazing in a battered face, and a body like those frozen beef carcasses Rocky Balboa used to punch.
My favorite part of CASINO ROYALE was this exchange after James lost 10 million:
Bond: Vodka martini.
Bartender: Shaken or stirred?
Bond (Growling): Do I look like I give a damn?
He’s a fine actor, which the character more than deserves and it will be interesting to see how his James Bond grows with experience in future films.
Born in the Ukraine, Former model Olga Kurylenko turned in a fine performance as the enigmatic Camile. With dark green eyes and full lips, she’s Bond Girl gorgeous, but it’s nice to see a Bond girl with some character development. Not only that, but she’s a pretty good actress, too (or at least better than Ursula Andress,Tanya Roberts, Denise Richards and I’ll stop right here).Open note to Miss Kurylenko: next time you're in town, let me buy you lunch.
The bad guy was Dominic Greene, portrayed by the busy French actor Matheiu Amalric. I was not impressed by him. At all. His ultimate scheme, although it was, you know, evil, it was nothing like any of the great Bond villains of the past—like Goldfinger’s robbing Fort Knox or Largo's stealing nuclear warheads.
Almalric here looked like a(n) Eurotrash Paul Reubens and he was completely forgettable, which was a shame because even really awful Bond villains in the past have at least been unforgettably bad.
Dame Judi Dench has returned as M for the sixth time in this film. I love Judi, I really do, but the more I see M out in the field, the more the power of her character is compromised. Back in the day when the late Bernard Lee was Bond’s boss you only saw him behind the desk—Bond had to go see him (always a wonderful excuse to see Miss Moneypenny, if you ask me) instead of following him around, picking up the pieces (or bodies, depending) . Additionally we got to see M at home—why? Okay, so we live in a world where it’s difficult to leave your job at the office, but M should remain a mystery—that’s why she isn’t given a proper name—it’s a secret.
Gemma Aterton as UK Agent Fields was a real treat. She was, not only a throwback to earlier, perkier Bond girls of the past, but she actually seemed to be in a completely different movie.(In a good way!)
Bond bedded her—geez, he went through more cars in this flick than he did women—she got one really good moment at Greene’s party and then, she was wasted offscreen, with a device reminiscent of the full-body-gilding in GOLDFINGER--she was oiled to death. I guess you can use too much lube.
Giancarlo Giannini reprised his role from CASINO ROYALE as the double agent Mathis, and although I could tell the audience appreciated his return, frankly, it had been so long since I had seen CASINO ROYALE, his character’s significance was lost on me.
Another friendly face from CASINO ROYALE was Jeffrey Wright as CIA spook Felix Leiter. According to my quick research, Wright is the eighth (or ninth if you count NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN) actor to portray Felix, and I think he’s the best. Carrying himself with an understated ease, Leiter proves himself to be a good man in a sometimes very bad business.
Q of S had a few touches which evoked some of 007’s earlier adventures.
The title sequence, for the first time in a very long time, (following the passing of Maurice Binder—he created the gun barrel opening animation and the best Bond title credits ) featured a few female forms—but not enough--funny though, it seemed the title designer chickened out.
Another nice touch was the quick shot of Bond’s business card which read—as it should from Fleming’s novels--Universal Exports.
Director Marc Forster’s impressive resume (MONSTER’S BALL , FINDING NEVERLAND, STRANGER THAN FICTION) wouldn’t be first on my list to helm a big action picture like this, but aided by editors Matt Chesse and Richard Pearson, he did a bang up job.
Even so, this Bond film suffered from Forster’s artsy touches, like inter-cutting the Palio di Siena Horse Race with the chase through the city’s underground aqueducts or when QUANTUM jumped around the globe, the locations were not announced with a boring computer read-out at the bottom of the screen, but instead we got spiffy fonts, different typefaces for each location, and they appeared as part of the scenery, like on the side of a building or on a road. This was cute at first, but it eventually grew tiresome.
QUANTUM boasts a car chase or two, a rooftop chase, a very spectacular on, over, and under scaffolding fight, a boat chase, an airplane chase, some brutish elevator fu (thanks Jo Bob Briggs), a scummy hotel room brawl and some frantic fisticuffs in a burning building—ignoring the Klingon proverb “Only a fool fights in a burning house”--and much much more. Yes, they are all very well executed and very exciting and so what.
Additionally, Q of SOLACE also offers up a convoluted storyline:
Is Bond acting out of revenge? What are Greene’s final plans and what does the CIA have to do with them? Who is Camile and how does her story intertwine with 007’s?
QUANTUM wants you to think there’s some greater meaning. Like, what are the implications of dealing with evil men in this not-black-and-white-morally ambiguous world, but it’s all a bunch of rubbish. I mean, it’s a James Bond movie, not SYRIANA.
If you like cool action scenes, you’ll really like QUANTUM OF SOLACE and for those skip-to the-good-parts alone, it belongs on your Bond DVD shelf .
But James Bond 22 was, at the end, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Shakespeare said that. You can look it up.
FILM GEEKZ Fun Fact:
DIE ANOTHER DAY director Lee Tamahori was arrested for allegedly soliciting on January 8, 2006 in Los Angeles.
He was dressed as a woman at the time. Rating:
