From the minute they announced the lame title, Quantum of Solace (what does this even mean?) for the new Bond film; I could not be less enthused. I liked Casino Royale well enough; Daniel Craig is a good Bond stuck in material that only showcases his body and fighting abilities. From the opening fight sequence to the ambiguous non-ending, ending is almost exactly Quantum of Solace is almost exactly like Royale. What happened to the Bond that I love? The suave, sexy guy who wants to save the world, bed a few women, travel to exotic and beautiful locations, play a little Baccarat and dispatch the bad guys with hot gadgets? None of the elements that make a Bond film unique are here. Travel site Orbitz has been promoting “Travel like Bond” on its website for the last month, after seeing the film, there is nowhere any sane person would want to go. All of the locations in Solace are these dirty, dank, 3rd world countries. Who would want to go there?
Marc Forster is one of my favorite directors of “serious drama”, Finding Neverland is one of my favorite films of all time, proves he’s capable of doing action in this movie. But the pacing felt a bit off. The action pieces seemed to go on too long and the quiet plot driven moments weren’t long enough – 10 minutes of action for every 3 minutes of plot. There’s a ridiculous Opera scene that should have been cut.
This film was written by 3 people Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis, & Robert Wade and at times it kind of feels like it. There’s not much plot to speak of and what is there, you keep waiting for the big moment when Bond and MI6 finally find out the truth about the secret organization behind everything is revealed and this moment never happens. It may have happened off camera when the chief bad guy, the charisma free Mathieu Amalric who is Dominic Greene, a businessman who happens to be part of this mysterious organization, begs Bond to let him go saying “I told you everything you want to know.” It would have been nice if Greene told us as well.
Part of the many problems with this film is that Greene’s history and motivations are never defined. What type of business is he in? What are his main goals? If he achieves them what would happen? If he owned all the natural resources of Barbados – based on what the big secret turns out to be, my response was “So what?” It doesn’t change or impact anything in the rest of the world or even to the suffering people of Barbados. Then the film tried to be geo-political by having various officials say “If we didn’t do business with bad guys, nothing would get done.” This line is repeated several different times which makes the film morally ambiguous on top of all its other problems, especially when nothing happens to the officials who are working with the bad guys. This is a sequel to Royale and while watching it, I felt like I would have liked it a little better if I had watched the equally forgettable Royale again before seeing this.
The Producers have forgotten what makes Bond unique. Bond is supposed to be fun, over the top escapism. Not gritty and real. We want to be Bond, not have Bond be us. We drive around in beat up VWs and crappy Ford Mini-Fans ever day. We can afford “fancy” hotels in 3rd world countries ourselves. Solace is one relentlessly dour, emotionless movie.
Final Grade D
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally Posted 11.15.08