On our “enchanted evening” out, Margie and I went over to see Quantum of Solace. I don’t regret the investment of time, but I’m glad it wasn’t the centerpiece of our expedition.
Quantum of Solace (2008)
| Overall |  | Story | |
| Production | | Acting | |
Story: If you have Casino Royale on DVD, watch it before going. If you don’t (or if you don’t) you will be lost fairly quickly in unexplained motivations, unrecalled characters, and misunderstood motivations.
The movie takes place immediately following CR, and focuses on Bond’s unraveling of the organization stemming from that (a nicely updated Bondian world-wide conspiracy), only to discover that he’s not the only one seeking revenge.
The movie has elements of The Spy Who Loved Me (a strong female “spy” role alongside Bond, fighting an ecoterrorist threat) as well as License to Kill (Bond goes rogue to avenge a death, dealing with an evil businessman in Latin America). It’s a sign that, despite the franchise’s reboot, there aren’t a lot of new new stories to tell in the Bond world, though this one is decent enough. It suffers mostly from being far too dependent on the previous film without actually spelling out in flashback or exposition or something more clever those dependencies.
There are also overly-long fights, and some gratuitous action sequences (why take the DC-3, for example, except to make the ensuing action more exciting). Dead bodies follow Bond like kindling (with some quick homages to Goldfinger and some others), and we even get a fight amidst explosions in a futuristic big-set villain’s lair (even if the reason for the setting and the fight remains muddy).
CR’s new Bond was grim and gritty. That continues in QoS, but it doesn’t feel as fresh, and Bond being driven by monomaniacal (yet denying) vengeance gets very single-note after a short while.
When all is said and done, the initial deep dark conspiracy, which begins so promisingly, turns out to be rather shallow and cliche, complete with arrogant Ugly American CIA agents and rather improbable schemes.
Acting: Daniel Craig does well with what he has, but he’s not given much to work with beyond “How I Spent My Summer Vacations Fleeing the Good Guys and Bad Guys Trying to Avenge My Betraying Dead Girlfriend.”
The other actors are decent enough — Judi Dench’s M nearly steals the show, but with that exception there’s not much depth called for, or given.
Production: The action is fast and furious — sometimes too much, as the action scene cuts come so quickly and chaotically that it becomes difficult to follow an action narrative. There are nice touches — some events that take place silently with music in the foreground — but it ends up feeling jagged and unsatisfying.
I wasn’t thrilled with the music in the main titles, but the overall score did some nice Barry-like thematic progressions, as well as pulling from the classic Bond canon.
It’s nice that Daniel Craig’s Bond keeps getting beat up, even if he cleans up a bit too nicely when all is said and done. (Evidently Daniel Craig himself suffered several injuries during shooting.)
There is no Q, and minimal high tech — some spiffy (and distracting) computer interface whizzies and some nice photo-computer composition. And I fear the cause of Hydrogen fuel cells has been pushed back for at least a decade. But most of the movie involves blood and bullets and sweat — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Overall: The movie is not one of the better Bond flicks, I fear — the freshness of the reboot has gone a bit stale, the action too choppy, and the story both too opaque and too shallow to really sink the teeth into. I don’t regret going, by any means, but I don’t feel compelled to see it again.
I liked it quite a bit, nearly as much as the last one.
Kurylenko and Arterton may have had a lot to do with that.
Worst theme music ever in a Bond film, I must say. Oh, how I miss John Barry.
I don’t know that I would call it the worst — but certainly not among the best.
I’ve seen all but one of the Bond movies in the theater, and this is the only one where I found myself unable to sit through the credits at the end. Also the only one where I had my hands clamped over my ears during the main titles.
I actually found the end credits more palatable than the main titles.
Will somebody please explain to me why the traditional gun barrel opening was moved to the end of the movie?
Amusing, I found the new song better than the one for CR simply because it was not the major negative that that one was, and I liked that there was a plot flow from one movie to the next.
My guess as to why the gun barrel shot was moved to the end was the “Bond will be back” bit at the bottom Avo. 🙂
CR and QoS are in the top ten Bond Movies to me.
I suspect one of two reasons.
1. To minimize the transition from CS to QoS (as they are actually one story).
2. Because originally there was supposed to be one more scene in the film (read the IMDB Trivia notes about it), which would have then segued well into the gun barrel walk. (The scene was cut to keep producers of the next flick to feel like they *had* to continue the current story arc.)