A new Bond, James Bond movie is always a cause of some excitement - not to mention quite a bit of publicity. Back on track as a series after the longeurs of the late 1980s when the miscast Timothy Dalton met a wall of indifference from fans (especially in the all-important US market) and contract difficulties kept Bond off our screens for far longer than he should have been, a run of entertaining but increasingly-salty Pierce Brosnan romps were followed in 2006 by a new Mr Bond. Ac-tor Daniel Craig stepped into the tux, vodka martini in hand, amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Bond cogniscenti and some bemusement from everyone else. His first movie, Casino Royale was a revelation; Craig was a brittle, edgy new Bond for the 21st century, the film was punchy and dark and, in a post-Bourne Identity world, it redefined Bond and veered him away from his old image as the camp, tongue-in-cheek survivor from a cheesier, gadget-strewn time. I'll admit that Casino Royale didn't really do a lot for me; at the end of the day I like Bond to be a bit of fun too and Casino Royale, with its clumpy plot and interminable poker sequences (I only play Happy Families, me) didn't float my Bond boat, much as I could admire its craft as a piece of cinema.
Now Bond's back with Mr Craig's second outing - and I rather liked it. This doesn't seem to be the popular view; the film's taken a bit of a drubbing from the critics (the official James Bond Magazine's review utterly dismantled the film, giving it a miserly 1/10 rating. Boo!) but even so it's coining it in at the Box office. Quantum of Solace continues Bond's rehabilitation as a proper dramatic character in a move which is, in some ways, as inpenetrable as its predecessor and yet it's a bit more action-packed and a little less hard to love.
The movie picks up directly from the ending of the last movie. A kinetic car chase sequence ends with Bond opening the boot of his battered motor to find Mr White, who he'd shot at the end of the last film, skulking inside. This is the first indication we receive that it really would have been a good idea to rewatch Casino Royale before watching this one because they really do complement each other, in many ways the two mfilms telling one complete story. It's hard not to feel a bit of a spine-shiver as the title sequence - an update of Maurice Binder's old girl-silhouette design - rolls in with Jack White and Alicia Keye's....er...unusual theme tune crashing away on top of it. As Bond songs go this isn't one of the best; hear it on the radio and you've forgotten it before it's finished. But played where it's supposed to be played - over the titles of a Bond movie - the song sort of works, a stripped-down version of the old overblown Bond tunes of yore but with enough pomp and bombast to convince as the theme to a modern action movie.
And there's the thing. Quantum of Solace is very much a modern action movie. Gone are the arching eyebrows and ludicrous gadgets of the old days; this is a fairly deadpan Bond, a real Cold War spy using his fists and his gun and taking no prisoners. The only like with the Bond of old is Dame Judi Dench as M. I'm getting a bit sick of Dame Judi Dench as M, bless her. All she seems to do these days is prowl about, scowling and muttering about decommissioning Bond and then secretly supporting him because, let's face it, he's all she's got. She's at it again here, trying to reign Bond in as he tries to avenge the death of Vesper, the (frankly unlikely) love of his life in the last film. Bond's hunger for vengeance takes him - at speed - all over the world. The narrative wanders and rushes about and is in no particular hurry to make itself clear to its audience. Fortunately when the film sags under thw weight of Bond's scowling or loads of dreary expositionary dialogue, there's soon another action scene to perk you up. Bond's now become Captain Scarlet, it seems, as he rushes across roofs, throws himself through the air, smashes through glass and always emerges unscathed or with a tell-tale drop of blood on his chin. His punch-ups are brutaller too, albeit a bit truncated nowadays, such is their viciousness. A couple of savage punches or kicks and the bad guy's down; none of the elongated fisticuffs which mr Connery and Mr Moore were so fond of. Oh, and would it kill them to have Bond hit someone who doesn't feel anything, Bond then looking puzzled by this before being hit by the baddie as an introduction to a long and unlikely roll-about fight? Come on, that's always fun...
A Bond film can often be defined by its villains. The Bond series has had some great ones. Goldfinger. Scaramanga. Blofeld. Dr No. Here we have...Dominic Greene. Okay. Sounds like an estate agent to me. But what the Hell, this is Bond 2008 style and big supervillains in caves or volcanoes with loads of machine-gun toting henchman and alarm bells going off all over the place are no longer the order of the day. Mr Greene (Mathieu Amalric) wears a white shirt and wants to take over the world's water supply...or soemthing. Yes, he's nasty and he's ruthless but he really needs to be stroking sort sort of feline and threatening Bond with piranhas. As it is he does the default new-Bond thing; he scowls and threatens and he's much more urbane than really Big And Evil. His secret base in the desert - some sort of odd hotel-cum-damn - has about two easily-outwitted guards and at the end of the obligatory fight with Bond he finds himself abandoned in the desert by our hero with only a bottle of oil to drink when he gets thirsty. Poor old Greene doesn't even get a spectacular villain's demise; M casually tells Bond, at the end of the movie, that Green's body has been found in the desert. It's a bit of a shame; there's a lot of potential in Greene and Amalric does his best with the thin material he has to work with but it's really hard not to yearn for a larger-than-life bad guy who just wants to blow something up or take something voer because he wants to.
What about the Bond girls? Well, Craig's no serial seducer in the old style. Still raging over the detah of Vesper (or is he? it's so hard to tell) he doesn't really have eyes (or anything else) for any other ladies - although he does find time to bed Fields (Gemma Arteron), the agent sent to try and keep Bond under control and out of trouble. In a nice if unnecessary nod to Goldfinger (if they're trying to distance new Bond from old Bond, why reference the past so blatantly?) Fields end up covered in oil on a bed. Bond's bits with Fields are the only time the film shows any real spark of humour (save the odd very deadpan observation by Bond) and it's the only time the film even remotely resembles Bond of old. The other lady in Bond's life this time around (apart from M and she doesn't count) is Camille (Olga Kurylenko) whose relationship with Greene appears to be entirely based on one physical encounter before she keeps falling in and out of Bond's orbit. But not his bed.
Having said the film only evokes the spirit of Bond in his escapades with Fields, I'm going to backtrack and correct myself because there's one scene which, in all honesty, might as well have featured Roger Moore grimacing in front of some dodgy back projection. I'm talking about the aircraft sequence before Bond and Camille arrive at Greene's desert base. it's another pulsating action sequence, relaistic enough to make you wince as planes explode and people plunge through the air - but the sight of Bond free-falling, hanging on to Camille as she opens her parachuite about ten feet above the ground, is really as daft as any invisible cars or alligator submarines from the old days. It's insane, impossible and it's also hugely exhilirating - and, if I'm being honest, it - and the various other action sequences - in a nice respite from trying to follow the plot and work out who the Hell who is and what they're doing to whoever that it.
And that's where Quantum of Solace lets itself down.It doesn't really make much sense and it doesn't seem to care. It seems to be so pleased with his gritty realism and its continuation and development of the new Bond from the last film, it's not really bothered about drawing the audience in with an interesting story, however far-fetched and improbable. Bond was never really about the stories, they were all pretty interchangeable; supervillain wants to spark World War 3/take over the world/rob Fort Knox. How he was going to do it was simplicity itself. Bond had to stop him. That was generally pretty much it. QOS (I'm sick of typing Quantum of Solace now....doh!!) seems determined to baffle its audience with its story as it impresses us with its cold new Bond.
Despite my resevations about QOS I did enjoy it. Sort of. Once I realsied I wasn't really going to be able to hang on to the story - and I realised it pretty quickly - I could relax and just enjoy the view and the action scenes. Diretcor Marc Forster has made a good fist of making a good action film - I just can't shake off the lingering feeling he hasn't really made a Bond film. Which sort of defeats the object of the exercise...
Where next, then, for 007? The 'Vesper' storyline is done now, Bond has closure. I hope that, when crafting the next movie, the producers and writers will step back and look at both these films and decide that there's room for a bit of the old Bond spirit to resurface, for the character and the audience to have a bit of fun again. I suppose no-one wants a return to the days of Jaws and Moonraker and Bond dressed as a clown...but I'm not sure I can really stomach another grainy, dour Cold War Bond thriller with an anonymous villain doing something I can't understand and don't really care about. Daniel Craig's a fine actor and a decent Bond...so let's open him up, loosen him up, let's see what he can
really bring to the character beyond the icy scowl and the two fists.
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