The James Bond of Goldfinger, Moonraker, The World Is Not Enough, and more than a dozen other 007 films was a charismatic, gizmo-equipped womanizer who dispatched Machiavellian antagonists with insouciant impunity and, more often than not, a droll remark.
Updated and re-worked, like just about every other piece of intellectual property these days from Batman and The Punisher to The Pink Panther, Daniel Craig’s “rebooted” Bond is leaner, harder, sterner –more Timothy Dalton than Roger Moore, with no Sean Connery wisecracks in sight – and lacking a Q Branch quartermaster to supply him with the traditional array of gadgetry.
Quantum of Solace
Directed by Marc Forster. |
Quantum of Solace picks up mere minutes after the end of Casino Royale, with Bond determined to avenge the death of his lover, Vesper Lynd, and investigate the shadowy organization linked to her death: Quantum. Enter Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a ruthless Quantum businessman with designs on the conflict-torn Bolivia, and Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko), a Russian-Bolivian wildcard who has her own score to settle with Greene and the would-be dictator he is helping to install, General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio).
Gemma Arterton joins this able cast as Strawberry Fields, a straight-laced MI6 agent who contributes little to the story but offers Bond some much-needed carnal attention and ultimately serves as an explicit reference to one of the most famous moments in 007 history. Judi Dench continues her role as M, while Giancarlo Giannini and Jeffrey Wright return as René Mathis and CIA agent Felix Leiter, respectively, to complete the ensemble.
The Bond franchise’s first direct sequel, Quantum completes the revamping of the series begun in its precursor by presenting Bond with villains who are no longer megalomaniacs with one finger on the trigger of some far-fetched doomsday device, but economic terrorists, unscrupulous blackguards who can and do exist in the real world (the film takes a page from Bolivia’s water privatization conflict, and seemingly another from John Perkins’ conspiratorial Confessions of an Economic Hit Man). Even more worrisome to fans of the original Connery formula, Quantum gives 007 a Bond girl he can’t bed.
But it’s not all bad news. The many fight scenes, in line with rest of the film’s tone, are grittier and more violent than ever before, even if they are shot Bourne-style, rapid-fire editing and all, every shot a flurry of motion. And the real-life, (comparatively) vérité aspects of the Jason Bourne framework pay off by grounding 007 in something much closer to home than, say, the CGI tidal wave he surfed in Die Another Day. There is certainly enough international intrigue here to satisfy fans of either series, but casual viewers may find themselves confounded by the overly elaborate succession of double- and triple-crosses.
The one thing sure to disappoint diehard fans and Bond newcomers alike is Quantum’s weak title sequence. Alicia Keys and Jack White (of The White Stripes) collaborated on the theme song, “Another Way to Die,” but despite their musical pedigree the track is a flop, and its visual backdrop is lacklustre to say the least.
If Quantum of Solace suffers something of an anticlimax, it is only because there are so many preliminary climaxes scattered throughout as death-dealing Bond circles the globe looking for answers. For all its re-evaluated priorities and its pared-down styling, the latest Bond film stays true to tradition with all the action and intrigue anyone could hope for. If you find yourself pining for Connery or Brosnan, well, they were the Bonds for their eras, but times change. Craig is a Bond for the twenty-first century – and all of the politics, drawbacks and flaws that come with it.