Quantum of Solace
by James Roland
Remakes and reboots flood most theaters these days, leaving fans arguing about various differences between the new incarnations and the originals.
As Quantum of Solace approached, early reports heralded the arrival of an even darker take on Bond … a fast and bloody film about revenge. Before its release, fans were already taking polls about whether or not they approved.
But fans shouldn’t have to worry about whether this dark Bond will make them miss the suave lounge lizard from earlier installments … fans should worry that Bond movies are turning into generic action films.
Despite the best efforts of director Mark Forster, Quantum is a brainless and boring installment in the franchise. While the film boasts stunning locations and brilliant fight choreography, Forster’s Bourne-esque style makes it impossible to see what’s going on. This seems to be an attempt to convey the “inconsolable rage” that Judi Dench so dramatically announces in the middle of the film but is never evident in Bond’s actions.
The dialog is pure exposition, the plot is weak and pointless. The audience is supposed to believe that Bond has gone on some sort of redemptive killing spree and pick up clues that lead him to the man ultimately responsible for his lover’s death in the last film. But the final scene, in which Bond finally faces his ultimate demon, has absolutely no connection to the rest of the film.
For the first 90 minutes we get to watch Bond pull along a useless female character as he stops the timely and yawn-inducing threat of eco-terrorism and political double dealing. The latest Bond Girl, played by Olga Kurylenko, is stunningly beautiful but ultimately useless. After Eva Green’s turn in Casino Royale, a new bar was set for Bond Girls. She was smart, real, and integral to the plot. In Quantum, Kurylenko’s first action is to survive an assassination attempt, only to drive immediately to the arch villain and ask him, “Why did you try to have me killed?”
While the screenwriters attempted to weave a continuing story in this film, setting it immediately after the events in Casino Royale, the script lost all of the intricate character development that made the last film so great. If we’re going to lose Sean Connery’s devilish grin and all of our favorite punny innuendos, then please give us the courtesy of solid drama. Instead, fans get a mediocre hybrid of realism and sloppy silliness.
The one-liners have returned to Bond, though with such lame execution they dribble out of character mouths as if the actors wanted to just get them over with. Seeing Bond leap onto the hood of a moving truck, aim his gun through the windshield at a random henchman, then quip “we have a mutual friend” does not recapture the frolicking violence of early films, but does manage to stamp out the thrilling realism that made Casino Royale so compelling.
There are a few characters that return in Quantum of Solace, but all of them are wasted and play no real role in the story. This is just a linear trail of vaguely connected fight scenes, capped off with an emotionally void confrontation with a generic character actor they were forced to use because they showed a photo of him in the last film. It’s thin, dull, anti-climactic, and serves only to introduce possible plot lines for future films.
While, as usual, the fight scenes and Craig’s performance are worth at least a matinée ticket price, Quantum of Solace will be forgotten after future, and hopefully better, Bond films.
