09/06/09 - Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace (2008, 106 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0830515/

When I watched GoldenEye a few weeks back it made me think about Quantum of Solace. I, at the time, felt that Quantum of Solace got way too much hate and that Casino Royale got way too much love, and that, coupled with how amazing GoldenEye was even on my whatever-number viewing, made me want to watch the newest Bond. So I did.

Quantum of Solace picks up immediately where Casino Royale left off. We have James Bond (Daniel Craig) trying to track down leaders in a huge criminal organization. Helping Bond (sometimes) is M (Judi Dench) along with "Bond Girls" Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton) and Camille (Olga Kurylenko). René Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) from Casino Royale returns as a good guy in this film while Mathieu Amalric plays bad guy Dominic Greene of QUANTUM. Jeffrey Wright returns as Felix Leiter, still with a very small role.

Allow me to first get up and give a short sermon. Batman Begins ruined the Bond franchise. Yes, Batman Begins. You see, Batman Begins "rebooted" the Batman series, forgetting the previous movies and starting everything over again. This was a huge success with tons of critics loving Batman Begins - coupled with great ticket sales. So the Bond franchise did the same thing. Casino Royale came out in 2006 to amazing critical reviews. Everyone and their mother seemed to like it. I hated it. Casino Royale abandoned everything that made Bond great. It was too real (like Batman Begins was much more real compared to the earlier movies) and changed many of the staples of the Bond franchise. Cut now to 2008. Quantum of Solace comes out and we get a return to the original Bond - somewhat. Yet what do critics say? They all hate it. It's not like Casino Royale. Well, Casino Royale wasn't even a Bond film in my opinion. Sure, Quantum of Solace isn't perfect (it still fouls up on a lot of the Bond essentials) but it's a lot better than Casino Royale. I don't know if I have different taste than everyone else in Bond movies (this is a possibility because I actually like On Her Majesty's Secret Service) or because the critics have a wrong definition of Bond. In any case, let's get on with some comments about the movie itself.

Quantum of Solace tries to have a good blend of action scenes and plot. For the most part it succeeds. The opening scene is a perfect beginning to a Bond film. It's over-the-top like a Bond film should be. Could half of this even happen? No. But that's how Bond openings are supposed to be. Throughout the movie we also have foot chases, an airplane crash scene and an exploding building climax taking place in the desert. Most of these scenes are great at putting Bond in a harrowing situation with little chance of survival with him then barely escaping. The only letdown of these is the airplane scene which is somewhat boring. These bigger action scenes are just what I want in a Bond movie, but the more brutal, in-your-face fist fights are poorly done. The camera is quick and it really does feel like Bourne. I'm not a fan of this, and it's been heavily featured in both of the movies in the reboot.

The other half of this blend is the plot and it's characters. Sadly, Dominic Greene is a pretty bad villain in my opinion. He never really does much in the typical Bond villain sense. He doesn't blow up a city, threaten to blow up a city, or anything, really. Sure, he's creating a drought but the way this is presented is slipshod at best for we never really feel for the people suffering from this lack of water. While Greene might just be a small player in the larger QUANTUM scheme of things, it doesn't hurt to make him a little more threatening. He didn't even have a huge, tough guy thug to go along with him to help beat up Bond. I guess you could say General Medrano served this purpose but Camille gets to kill him.

The acting in Quantum of Solace is typical of a Bond film. It's really no surprise that many of the Bond Girls go on to do a whole lot of nothing with their careers for they usually are just chosen to be eye candy. Arterton's Strawberry Fields certainly does this and just this and is okay at it. It seems like the character could've been more but that this was abandoned. Olga Kurylenko as Camille plays a different role. She's never really a love interest of Bond's but really just someone Bond finds with a common goal - revenge. She's fine to look and she's never annoying in her role, but seeing as how she has her own goal and own mission she somewhat fails as a Bond Girl. I just don't think future characters will be compared to hers. Natalya Fyodorovna Simonova she is not. And finally, how is Craig as Bond this time around? He's without a doubt much better. He's still too tough and brutal for the Bond of the twenty-some films that came out before Casino Royale but his performance is a lot better than his debut. At least in my opinion - and I again quickly acknowledge that I'm in the minority in this. The one thing I don't like is that he's frequently beaten up and shown in ragged and bloodied clothes. As silly as it sounds, Bond, in my opinion, should be perfectly done up and somehow have pristine clothes after every scene. It's corny, I know, but Bond isn't really supposed to be real.

Overall, I gave this film a 6/10. It's a great attempt to return to the Bond of yore. It still fails in quite a few things but the blend of action and plot is good enough. It's quick, hard-hitting action like Casino Royale but pretty much everything's improved over the previous film. Hopefully some of these things will be worked out in the next one for this hardcore Bond fan's sake.