After the meaty origin story Casino Royale, greeted with almost universal acclaim for its back to basics bravado, it would seem the honeymoon really is over for this latest reincarnation of cinema's longest running franchise. Looking to build on the accrued goodwill by refining the bloated Bond into something efficient enough to shed the anachronistic shackles, first time Bond director Marc Forster and scripter Paul Haggis have trimmed so much off the top as to render the series virtually emaciated and delivered a film as confounding as its nonsensical title.
Picking up right where Royale left off, Quantum opens hard and fast with Bond (Daniel Craig) weaving his bullet riddled Aston Martin in an out of traffic on a winding Sienna cliffside road while duly dispatching the customary bad guys in hot pursuit to deliver Mr. White for interrogation. It's an interrogation that's short-lived as an assassin is only too happy to illustrate just what White means when he says "we have people everywhere."
Bond sets off in hot pursuit and a frantic chase through the sewers and onto the rooftops promptly ensues. It's a chase that essentially runs the entire length of the film as Bond delves deeper into this mysterious global shadow group, moving from Sienna to Haiti, to Austria, to Bolivia, to the tune of chase-catch-kill one flunky at a time, as M (Dench) despairs: "if you could avoid killing every possible lead it would be greatly appreciated."
As anyone familiar with Bond history can tell you, the series has always kept one eye on what's hip and tried to present itself accordingly. Moonraker being the first Bond to arrive after Star Wars sent Bond into space. Raiders of the Lost Ark was set in Egypt and was a smash, so Octopussy had Bond go to India. So what's cool right now in the action/espionage genre? Two words: Jason Bourne; which is exactly what Forster and Haggis have tried to give us.
Love them or hate them, you know where you stand with a Bond film, or at least you should; high-tech, high-class thrills and spills that propel a story that's a little bit larger than life rooted in the world view that we're good and the rest of the world is bad. But Forster somehow manages to exhibit such disdain for the key elements that make a Bond film, that you have to question why he took the job on in the first place? There are no gadgets, no Q, no Moneypenny. Bond doesn't introduce himself and he doesn't order his drink (even though he's shown drinking it). He beds a girl of course, though in days of old you could at least enjoy watching him charm her panties off. Now it's just straight to the bedroom, which really illustrates the chief complaint with Quantum of Solace - it just isn't very much fun.
In attempting to deliver a post-9/11 Bond, where governments act wholly in self-interest and everyone is dirty, producer Michael G. Wilson has orchestrated a shockingly cynical film. With the CIA in bed with the bad guys and the British foreign secretary pressing M to have Bond killed, a broken-hearted Bond, brooding and miserable, simply brutalizes people on the trail of the syndicate he holds responsible for the death of Royale's Vesper Lynd. It seems director Fosters' chief mandate was to expressly forbid anyone in the film from smiling at any point in time.
It might not be so bad if there was something at the end of the hunt, but Mathieu Amalric’s scheming industrialist, Dominic Greene, comes over more like an insurance salesman than a Bond villain. Moonraker’s Hugo Drax had a plan to exterminate 99.99% of the world’s population and breed a new master race aboard an orbiting space station. What does Dominic Greene want? To fiddle about with Bolivia’s natural resources and make a bit of cash – well whoo hoo.
Gone are the days when someone who refused to co-operate with the villain was introduced to a tank of piranhas or dispatched via some other dastardly flamboyant device of death of which only a Bond villain could conceive. Here, when the freshly installed Bolivian dictator realizes he's been played and exhibits defiance, he's merely bribed with a suitcase full of money before skulking off to vent his frustrations by raping a cocktail waitress.
We're not necessarily asking for a return to the days of private islands and hollowed out volcano fortresses, but can we have just a little bit of the old Bond back? Yes, he needs to move with the times, but would it have killed Forster to crowbar in a "Bond, James Bond" or a "shaken-not-stirred?" Yes, Quantum of Solace is polished technical perfection. Yes, it's functional and it serves its purpose. But it cannot possibly be anyone's idea of a good time at the movies, and surely that has to still be the point?
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Considering that Casino Royale was rolled out as one of the flagship Blu-ray titles, there is something decidedly half-assed about this single disk edition of Quantum of Solace and the paltry offering of extras. The absence of even a single a commentary track hints at a deluxe edition somewhere further down the line. Instead we get the two theatrical trailers and a smattering of some decidedly throwaway video blogs from various crew members that frankly reveal nothing about the filmmaking process.
Composer David Arnold's music featurette is even worse, lasting maybe two minutes during which time the most interesting thing uttered is his candidly baffled musing on what the hell Jack White and Alecia Keys are doing together to begin with. You'll also find the music video for the film's theme song "Another Way to Die" which, as Mark Kermode astutely pointed out in his review, is just a shit, shit theme tune. "If you can't hum it, then what's the point?" - too right, Mark.
Director Marc Forster's clip is amusing if only because everyone in it does nothing but talk about how logistically difficult the film is and how much expectation is riding on it on the back of Casino Royale, and at times it's almost as if they're apologizing in advance for letting us down. "Bond on Location" ably illustrates why length is not a measure of depth as never have so many words been used to say so little. Marc Forster: "It's really important to me that the locations look and feel authentic" - wow, we can certainly see why you're in charge. A second location featurette, titled simply "On Location" is wholly redundant with Forster merely repeating what he said in the first one.
The shooting diary is better as it takes you inside some of the extensive stunt training, which by the looks of things, was equally as complicated as the actual filmmaking - but at the same time is maddeningly short. Olga Kurylenko and the Boat chase rounds things out where the role of the Bond girl is dissected and Forster really does cement himself as perhaps the least interesting filmmaker in the world who can speak for mere seconds while still managing to be incredibly boring.
"Quantum of Solace" is on sale March 24, 2009 and is rated PG13. Action. Directed by Marc Forster. Written by Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis & Robert Wade. Starring Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Mathieu Amalric, Olga Kurylenko.
