Quantum of Solace

[cinemabon]

Quantum of Solace – directed by Marc Forster

Don’t read one more word beyond this point unless you want to know about the best James Bond movie ever made. Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have produced a gritty, action-packed, thrill ride that starts with a bang and ends with poignancy. This is obviously only part two of a trilogy meant to wet our appetites for more to follow.

Daniel Craig’s Bond is tougher, more hard-nosed, and embroiled than any Bond before him. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, and barely stops to enjoy sex. He does an awful lot of drinking instead. He is bent on trying to figure out a puzzle, the parts of which we only find a few tantalizing pieces (hence the next film). In pursuing the killer of his girlfriend from “Casino Royale,” Bond opens a can of proverbial worms and discovers a secret organization so large, so powerful, and so well connected that its roots even reach inside the infamous MI-6 organization, right under M’s nose. Judi Dench returns once more (she started with “Goldeneye”) as the no-nonsense head of Britain’s Secret Service. She lends just the right amount of restraint and drama to the role, especially in Bond’s presence. The two react off each other well as if she and Craig do this tantalizing sexual dance around each other’s character; competing to see who can perform the most dramatic delivery. Craig meets Dench at least half way in every scene they share, the two balance the necessary opposites in character during their exchanges. Whatever sequel the producers have planned, they should increase the breadth and depth of the scenes played by these two.

Bond discovers that ecology-minded Dominic Greene (French actor, Mathieu Amalric) is buying up worthless acres of dessert. He chases Greene around the world, from Austria to Bolivia, to determine how this secret organization fits into the scheme of things. Violating protocol, M must strip Bond of his finances and passport. Instead of fighting his own organization, James seeks his old friend from “Casino Royale,” Mathis, played so well by veteran actor Giancarlo Giannini. His humor and quick delivery offer a welcome break in the action. He comes to Bond’s aid while also challenging the secret agent to examine his feelings regarding Vesper. When Bond finally catches up to Greene, he knows he could easily kill the villan, but chooses instead to do his bit for Queen and country. Bond does not share the information he obtains from Greene, moments after the climax of the film, a prerequisite, full of explosions and beautiful femme fatales as are most Bond films. The movie ends with more questions raised than answered, hence, the necessary sequel.

The action from the beginning of the film to its end is startling and immediate. Even before the credits begin, the film opens with a car chase on a curvaceous Mediterranean road. Bond brings what he believes is Vesper’s killer to justice, only to find out that MI-6 has a rogue agent. The chase scene that follows the opening chase scene is both dramatic and full of so many stunts crammed into one action-packed moment; it’s easy to loose count. This Bond never rests. If it’s action you crave, you don’t have to wait long in “Quantum of Solace.”

DP Roberto Schaefer and editor Matt Chesse worked with Forster on “Finding Neverland,” hardly an action film. However, the trio have worked well here, creating a film that not only has great internal drive, though its plot is rather sparse at times, but this Bond is photographed and cut extremely well. They’ve spliced together not simply a travelogue of beautiful places, Forster also moves his camera into the nitty-gritty parts of humanity, unafraid to cut away from Bond and show off some of the setting around the main character. This adds a touch that most Bond films, trimmed to focus mainly on the flow of the plot, have ignored in the past. Forster reaches for art as well as displaying the standard formula we’ve come to accept, and for my money, with the help of his friends, he achieves that goal. Give yourself the gift of excitement this holiday season, go see “Quantum of Solace.” You’ll get your money’s worth… believe me.

[tabuno]

I have to agree totally with cinemabon's assessment. Quantum of Solice could be one of the best, if not the best Bond film. This gritty, darker and much more emotionally complex espionage films gets back to the richer, textured spy movies of the past, think Le Carre. Two areas where I differ with cinemabon is his less than stellar points as to the plot and his enjoyment of the action scenes. Personally, I found the plot adequately paced for my level of intelligence and allowed for the revealing plot points to soak in and be mauled about as if personally involved with the mystery. As for the first two action sequences, while there were some very promising new and dazzling action techniques used in them, I found the photography and the pacing, editing "lazy" because it was so fast, so scattered that I couldn't enjoy and feel the exciting thrill of the continuity of the chase and action - it was too blurry, too choatic (perhaps too real) for dramatic immersion and to experience the power of the shots - it was blur so much so that the camera work didn't have to really process the shots. However, besides the two weak action sequences, this movie was a riveting and as substantively and emotionally enjoyable as the Bourne films. However, to have to pick between to the two two franchises would be impossible for me.

[Chris Knipp]

Marc Forster: Quantum of Solace

Both shaken and stirred

Review by Chris Knipp

People tend to agree that the "new" James Bond, Daniel Craig, is awesome--and really new. Ian Fleming's original Bond was "cruelly handsome." Craig's got the cruel part, but looks take second place to muscle. He isn't pretty and he isn't stylish except insofar as a man who's lean and hard looks well in a good suit. Though he's brisk and then some--faster than a speeding bullet--he's rather sullen. His face is gnarly, able to regenerate scar tissue with stunning rapidity but little suited to the registering of human emotion. If he strains a bit he can just manage a snarl. Craig is above all a tougher, more pared-down Bond, whose finesse comes not in his skill at seducing a woman or pouring a cocktail but in the capacity to survive any physical challenge. This second Bond film with Craig shows his version can still be fun, and his adventures, amazingly, given all that's been hacked off, still contain some of the glamorous, extravagant feel of the earlier films and of Fleming's silly, superficial, but irresistibly entertaining novels. But the franchise (this is said to be Bond film no. 22) has been updated and reconceived for our times.

Not only Bond, but the other trappings of the books and previous films have been rethought. "M" is now a woman--Judy Dench, solid, crisp, understated, and curiously protective. When others want to derail Bond for killing all the suspects in a case, she sees to it that he's allowed to continue. There are beautiful babes, but not so many and not for so long. There's futuristic gadgetry. But it's more plausible, and less individual. No exploding cigarette lighters or weapon-emitting vehicles with ejection seats; just the high-tech essentials of our day--telephones cued in with computers and data systems. And some excesses: at one point Bond intercepts a dozen bad guys holding a conference call using little nodules in their ears as they sit in the audience of an ultra-modern and plenty-loud production of Tosca in Bregenz, Austria. Bond suggests they try another venue. Indeed they might. But Bond himself makes do with nothing but a pistol and his own indestructible body.

Unlike Jason Bourne, Quantum's Bond his no mystery to solve, just a score to settle. There's no self-questioning, just a grudge.

Unfortunately, there's no finesse. Yes, Bond has an elaborately prepared cocktail, but it's more complicated than fun, no "shaken, not stirred" (a formula mocked by Craig's Bond in his first outing). There's no Fleming fascination with chic brand names. Bond dons evening clothes and the good suits--only slightly bulgy from the muscles. He drives a Bondian Aston Martin during the ridiculously violent and rapid chase along the Italian Riviera that opens the movie, but though there may be some pleasure in seeing extremely expensive European sports cars battered and colliding like toy bumper cars, there's no elegance in it. The poor Astin gets its door torn off, and looks a wreck all the way through the scene.

Bond himself is like that car. He's thrown about, and in several sequences jumps around on buildings as if practicing the French sport of parkour, which has been defined as "an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body." That, in a nutshell, is Daniel Craig as 007. Like Matt Damon's Jason Bourne, his body is his main weapon. Bond's taken away by three MI6 men--or four, I didn't have time to see-- under orders from "M," and taken into an elevator. "M" probably knows this will happen: five seconds after the elevator doors close behind them the would-be guards are all on the floor unconscious, only Bond left standing. We can't even see how he did it; so what? It was inevitable.

Quantum may offer Solace, but it's short not only on elegance but wit. There's little humor and the bad guys lack Fleming's bizarre flourishes. There's a standard-issue South American dictator waiting to take over again. There's a fake eco-sensitive entrepreneur named Greene (Matthieu Amalric), who will strike a bargain with anybody, just like an actual global arms dealer. He corners the water supply to help the general take over the country: it's all too plausible. True to life too, the statement that the Americans don't matter much any more. True to the film's seriousness, the salt-and-pepper CIA duo, with James Wright as the shrewder of the two, Felix Leiter, who becomes Bond's ally, may seem destined to be buffoons, but they get the straight treatment.

You can't see all this as a dumbing down. Fleming's books were clever and entertaining, but hardly what you could call brain twisters. It's a simplification, a toughing up. And a speeding up--the latter adjusted to suit the 21st-century TV generations accustomed to five images a second, to brain-damaging ADD-engendering, Ritalin-requiring, stimulus-hungry young boy's minds. The opening sequence, with its unmotivated, unexplained, pointless, sense-jarring car clashes and spins and falls, is designed just for them, to say: don't worry. We know you're watching, and we're going to give you what you want. But though large parts of the world are growing fatter and softer, athletes have grown tougher and faster, and all spectators know that, so the Sixties Bond now seems effete, and he had to be reconditioned to meet the demands of Extreme Sports and the fantasy quotient of the digital age.

Is this a good movie? It's an entertainment, just like all the other Bond pictures, and though we can sigh the lack of the old charm, this lean and mean model holds its own quite well. If only there were more conversation. And if only it would relax a bit more.

[cinemabon]

In the majority, I have to agree with your review, Chris. The parallels between Bourne and Bond are easy to make, as have many critics. The problem is that the secret agent genre has undergone many changes in the last decade, where audiences want the action hero and less the sophisticate.

Fleming's novels did have Bond more the man about town. Connery certainly played him that way (or rather, director Terrence Young created the look as he interpreted the novels). However, as Bond progressed, his knowledge of this and that made him often come off as a snob. While it made his character clever at one time, today's spy is a killing machine created in a laboratory by behaviorists. The only mention of Bond's education (mentioned by Vesper Lynn in "Casino Royale") is that he went to Oxford, but on a scholarship, "probably for football," she adds.

In his recent review of "Solace," Roger Ebert longs for a bit of wit and sophistication, too. Whichever way the Bond/Bourne films go, they will influence the other so that when the next Craig/Bond comes out in two years, it will certainly reflect the change in taste.

This was the biggest opening for any Bond film in the history of the franchise.

[Chris Knipp]

Well, Bond, or his new avatar, is certainly alive and well. It's true, the elegance and wit levels have dropped, but it's not my impression that there's been a great falling off. In fact the Daniel Craig film Bond may be superior to some of the other recent ones. Fleming's books weren't sophisticated about intelligence activities or realistic in their milieus like John Le Carre's. They're more in the nature of lightweight entertainments.

I compared the new Bond to Jason Bourne a couple of times, and I could carry that further. But I wasn't intending to emphasize this point. Some of the hand-to-hand combat sequences, on in particular, in this film relate to a Bourne sequence, and the "killing machine" nature of the new Bond resembles Bourne. But the funny thing is, probably Ludlulm was influenced by Fleming, and now the Fleming character had drawn from its derivative, just the way women in the African continent at one time started wearing their hair in an American "Afro" style. It gets confusing.

[oscar jubis]

Bond has always been a globe-trotting dude. The difference is that now the locales are more low-rent, grittier, less glamorous and obvious that Bond films of old. And there's a bit more dimensionality to the female characters. Bond films have always utilized the latest in special effects technology for their action sequences. Quantum of Solace is no different in that regard. Overall I still find the franchise worth sampling.