Quantum of Solace, which is directed by Marc Forster and written by Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis & Robert Wade, is Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures release of EON Productions’ 22nd adventure in the longest-running film franchise in motion picture history with Daniel Craig reprising his role as Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007.
‘Quantum of Solace’ picks up the storyline of Casino Royale mere hours after his betrayal by Vesper Lynd the woman that Bond had fallen in love with. In Quantum of Solace, Bond and ‘M’ attempt to interrogate Mr. White, whom Bond has captured and in doing so it is revealed that the organization which blackmailed Vesper to steal Bond’s casino winnings is far more complex and dangerous than anyone had imagined.
First off let me say that Daniel Craig is only the second actor to play the role of James Bond that I have truly liked and enjoyed watching in the role and whom I feel captures the true essence of the character that Ian Fleming was writing about. I am probably one of those rare people who read all the James Bond books before every having seen any of the cinematic versions of them. To me, in all of Fleming’s books, Bond is a killer who can pretend to be a fancy gentleman, not a fancy gentleman pretending to be a killer. The only other actor in the Bond role that I felt captured the character perfectly for me was Timothy Dalton (and yes this means that I am not in the ‘Connery IS Bond and there can be no other’ camp. While nice to look at and he is a talented actor, Sean Connery just never cut it for me as James Bond).
Like Dalton’s Bond, Daniel Craig’s is gritty and hard edged. You believe him when he is ruthlessly stalking an enemy or playing by his own rules and codes of conduct giving quarter to none, not even M (played by the elegant as always Judi Dench) whom he respects more than any other person in the world.
Secondly, to me story wise Quantum of Solace reminded me quite a bit of Dalton’s last outing as Bond which was ‘License to Kill’. Both movies have the same elements of a James Bond driven by grief and the need for vengeance over the loss of woman he loved. Both dealt with a James Bond who was not only willing to risk his own reputation, position and his life, but that of others around him to accomplish his vengeance/grief driven goal. In both stories there is a bare minimum of snappy one liner comebacks and the ones given are well placed and have impact. There is no over the top witty repartee with the women and the bad guys and no smirking ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ towards the camera. As with ‘License to Kill’, this was Bond at his most elemental and animalistic.
The good news about all of this is that I like this kind of James Bond. I want him to be gritty and edgy with a large measure of moral ambiguity and not some clear cut ‘superman’. To me this is how Ian Fleming wrote the character. I liked ‘License to Kill’ and, for the most part, I liked Quantum of Solace for many of the same reasons. Of course the bad news in all of this is, judging by how soundly ‘License to Kill’ and Dalton’s Bond was trashed by critics and Bond movie-goers alike, I seemed to be in a minority when it comes to wanting a grittier, edgier James Bond. Though I am sensing that there might be a difference in how the Bond audiences of now will react to this kind of James Bond compared to those of the late 80’s viewed such a drastic change in how the character was presented on screen. ‘License to Kill’ might well have been ahead of its time.
On a more specific level, I think that the biggest short coming that Quantum of Solace has is that there is too much reliance on the audience having seen and/or remembering the events of Casino Royale and the character of Vesper Lynd (Eva Green). There is too much reference back to this without a visual ‘recap’ for the audience to be able to fully connect with where Bond’s actions, emotions and motivation are coming from. His feelings for Vesper is too much just this nebulous thing that audience goers might not be able to drawn into caring about or having an interest in. I am of the opinion that it might not be a good thing to have an audience disconnected from the main point of a character’s motivation. Even I, who had seen and liked ‘Casino Royale’, was having a difficult time remembering the plot well enough without a visual recap to connect it to this movie.
Another specific thing I had an issue with was that there were far too many almost mindless ‘chase and kill’ scenes in the opening half hour of the movie. The car and gun chase at the beginning was excellent and it set the tone that yes this IS a Bond movie. But the subsequent foot-chase and boat chase scenes in my opinion went on far too long and with the case of the foot chase way too far into the improbable. It got boring and coming from me whose friends swear that I am an adult woman whose ‘inner child’ is a 14-year-old boy who likes car chases and explosions, that’s saying a lot if I was getting bored. I live for action movies. What I think really could have served this movie much better is that this time could have been devoted to doing a bit of a visual recap on the Vesper scenario. Spending time on that instead of wasting it on overdone chase scenes would have, in my opinion done more to solidify the plot of the movie.
Last point is that none of the other characters, with the exception of James Bond’s old friend Mathis (played by the very suave Giancarlo Giannini) and M, seemed to be given much depth or personality. Dominic Greene (played by the very intense Mathieu Amalric) the villain in Quantum of Solace was stereotypical and generic which made him extremely predicable. The big ‘reveal’ about what his nefarious plot was all about seemed to be of little significance to the movie. It went by in the blink of an eye with little or no elaboration to justify why it made him so worthy of being an adversary to James Bond. The two ‘Bond Girls’ came off as shallow ‘token’ presences in the movie were overshadowed by the specter of Vesper who wasn’t even in the movie. Though Camille (played by the stunningly beautiful Olga Kurylenko) faired much better story wise than Strawberry Fields (played by the striking Gemma Arterton) did.
Overall it was nice to see an edgier, grittier James Bond again. Daniel Craig is excellent. Yet the movie itself, while having good plot elements and ideas, seemed to lack cohesion and honestly it felt like it had been rushed and very little time was taken to think things out more extensively.
Minor nitpick. I disliked the opening credits to this movie and for me they lacked the cinematic presence of previous opening credits of James Bond movies.
Final Grade = B-
Reviewed by M R Reed
Artwork courtesy of and Copyright 2008 to MGM/Sony
Watch the theatrical trailer for Quantum of Solace