Movie Review: Quantum of Solace

Alternate title: Quantum of Whatness?

Spoiler alert: I will be discussing scenes and topics from the film, so if you’ve not yet seen it and/or don’t want to know about it, move on to the next article.

Before I even begin, let me make this clear: I LOVE JAMES BOND films.  I have some very found memories of Bond films, and I’m pretty sure that For Your Eyes Only might have included on of my first views of a semi-naked woman, while Mr. Connery introduced me to Baccarat, fine whiskeys, and men that can drive like experts, and run marathons, all while smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

So with much enthusiasm and vigor I headed out to see a Quantum of Solace with a small group of friends the other night.  Where to even begin with the problems here.  One of my favorite things about a Bond film is the opening credits sequence.  The opening of Octopussy ranks high on my list, while Die Another Day might come in at a close second.  These intros often have cutting edge effects, and can hold their own as artistic short works.  These opening credits did very little for me, with only the sand shifting into nude female silhouettes providing any interest at all.  The rocking camera inside a longitude/latitude globe has already been over used, and I was left baffled as to what the film was/is even all about before the opening sequence.  Not so with other openers.  Ah, que sara sara – perhaps the rest of the film will explain it all to me….

Cut to the opening scene.  Ok, NOW we’re talkin’!  James Bond doing what James Bond does best: Driving fast cars fast while being shot at through impossible situations.  Hot damn, now I feel like we’re getting somewhere.  If this is the opening scene, I can’t WAIT to see the main car chase featured (usually about an hour or so into the film).  The problem is – it never came.  It’s almost as if the car chase shot it’s wad within the first 5 minutes.  Come to think of it, that’s exactly what happened.  Ok, no biggie, car chase down, bring on the double entendres, super bad guys and smokin’ hot babes!

Super Bad guys, check.  This was one of the highlights of the film for me: the variety and depth of the villains.  One crazy assed French (was he French?) guy scheming to control vast tracks of land in Boliva via supporting and facilitating a coup d’ etat, advisors to high British officials, and corrupt Bolivian generals to name a few.  And while there was plenty of action involving Bond v. Villains, I found the lack of witty dialogue a bit of a letdown.  If you think back to Connery or Moore, some of the best and most memorable scenes often involved a pun or two and some scintillating back and forth.  And having seen Casino Royale, I’m quite sure that Mr. Craig is capable of not only delivering, but also delivering with Bond style.  Ok, bad guys, check…bring on the smokin’ Bond girl.

Hello?  Bond Girl…enter stage left.  Bond girl????

And herein lies the problem.  There was no Bond girl.  One might argue that there were actually 2 Bond girls in the film, but to be honest, neither one of them are memorable, there was absolutely no steamy hot sex scene, and to top it all off, no beautiful bare breasts, or even super skimpy bikini (love you Halle Berry).

Is it water?  Is it Oil?  Is it Quantum?

With car chase blown in the first five minutes, no sex, and pithy dialogue thrown out the window, all we’re left with is the decent amount of Bad Guys.  Even this gets a bit twisted and wtf’d as I’m still unclear about what exactly environmentalist/evil villain Mr. Greene was really after out there in the desert in Boliva.  After one weak plane chase (I’m assuming this was the substitute for the car chase?) we find Bond and Bond girl #1 at the bottom of a cave where they soon discover that Greene is creating dams and planning to monopolize a nations water supply.  But then later in the film we’re confronted with Bond girl #2 turning up dead in Bond’s hotel room covered completely, and presumably drown in, Oil.  So really – what are we after here, water or oil?

Oh, and then we’ve got a retired MI6 agent living the good life in Italy, only to be dragged off to South America by an ‘on the run’ Bond, who then later turns up dead at the hands of the Bolivian police only a short 20-30 minutes later.  I’m assuming that this plot line involved framing/implicating Bond in an agent murder, but fails to really deliver the point of this sideline.

All in all, I’m pretty disappointed.  Casino Royale was an outstanding debut for Mr. Craig, and Quantum of Solace is a severe letdown, almost to the point of being an embarrassment to the Bond genre.  Quantum of Solace is the 22nd Bond film made, and well, Let’s just skip over On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and call 20 out of 22 outstanding pictures.  Hopefully the video game will be better than the film.

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