Bond may have his quantum of solace, but I have none…
So today I wound up in town with nothing to do. I showed up to help out with the Christmas skit video, only to find out that the reason I thought they needed me they didn’t need me for, and we wound up being done in 30 minutes flat. So, I decided to go see the new 007 flick, “Quantum of Solace”.
Now anyone who knows me knows I’ve always enjoyed the Bond franchise. Maybe it was the gadgets, maybe it was the guns, maybeit was that part of me as a child that always thought how neat it would be to be a spy (this is the glorified spy, the one that doesn’t have to do things of questionable nature to accomplish his tasks but gets all the fun of sneaking around and doing secretive stuff… You know, before you realize that occasionally they have to hurt people). But I’ve always enjoyed them. And I did truly enjoy the first of the Daniel Craig-era bond films, Casino Royale (See my previous review).
Quantum, on the other hand, I have to say I had a hard time watching.
It started out well, Bond in a high speed car chase in his Aston Martin, fleeing an Alfa Romeo full of guys with automatic weapons, without really any explanation as to why (although, the way Bond goes through $300,000 Aston Martins, it’s a wonder that MI6 can even stay in business…). Then we find that the movie picks up almost exactly where Casino Royale left off, as after the chase, Bond opens the trunk to reveal… You guessed it! Mr White, the guy he shot in the leg at the end of Casino Royale. Complete with leg wound. Seriously, it’s been that short of time.
As the movie progresses, you get to see Bond basically hammer his way through Quantum, the organization behind Lechiffre, leaving a fairly nasty body count in his wake. And there’s a few moments where the absolute ludicrous nature of the fight scenes makes you kind of wonder why the producers had to go there (Seriously, out of the belfry, through the skylights, and, by good twist of fate, onto scaffolding, where they have an epic fight whilst dangling from ropes and pulleys? I’m all for over the top action, but this was over the top fake looking action… I’m not sure, but the whole scene seemed like some of the CGI fights you see in Spider Man 3 where things don’t look quite right as they fly through the air). Casino Royale had, for the most part, an air of realism to it. Quantum? Not so much. Bond went from being a real, vulnerable person to being a high-flying superhero with a gun again. I don’t think I’d have minded so much if he’d had Q back with his hi-tech gadgetry to save his skin, but no. Bond punches, kicks, stabs, andshoots his way through the movie.
Dominic Greene was a decent villain, I liked Lechiffre better, but Greene was enough of a slimy dirtbag that I still hated him enough to cheer when he got what he deserved. And, admittedly, the friction between him and Bond in their scenes together was pretty good. Favorite line had to be:
Greene: My friends call me Dominic.
Bond: I’m sure they do.
It was just the perfect, Bond-esque pithy comeback you’d have expected, and I loved it. There were still moments of the movie that I thought were great, Bond in a boat, Bond at the Opera, Bond evading capture, and Bond in a plane. But I don’t think it was enough for me to just have the big action set pieces. I wanted details. Where did Quantum come from? Why the heck is Vesper’s boyfriend working for them? What did Bond get out of him in the end?
There were some parts that were just disturbing, mostly centered around the military dictator that Quantum is helping to install in Bolivia and his sadistic tendencies. And then there were the parts that just left you wondering how the producers expected you to suspend your disbelief so much, such as the random, almost totally abandonded (save for the bad guys, Bond, the girl, and the staff) high-tech hotel with its solar panels and… Hydrogen fuel cells? In the middle of a country that we’ve established over the course of the film is mostly third-world? Seriously, who builds a hotel in the middle of the desert?! (Okay, outside of Las Vegas, that is…)
Was it a terrible movie? No, like I said, I liked parts of it. But I felt like there were parts it could’ve done without, and other areas I wish would’ve been better fleshed out. And I’m grateful that someone decided to abandon the idea of putting Bond and Leiter into a sexual relationship like was talked about in the earlier stages of pre-production (glad to see even Hollywood has some sense, albeit not much). I just don’t think it lived up to its predecessor due to the amount of hype. And, lets face it: Bond has changed. It’s no longer quite as “fun”. Sure, the chintzy naming of female characters made a (brief) comeback (although Agent Fields, we don’t find out her first name is “Strawberry” until the end credits…). But this was a considerably darker film than the others, it reflected Bond’s mood in his quest for vengance. Maybe now that he has that, we can get off of the brooding feel that Quantum gave and get back to the action-packed, still somewhat upbeat Bond we all know and love.