← Back to Reviews
in
#43 - Quantum of Solace
Marc Forster, 2008
Following on from the events of Casino Royale, a vengeful Bond (Daniel Craig) is driven to investigate the terrorist conspiracy responsible for killing his previous love interest, which leads him to focus on a wealthy philanthropist (Mathieu Amalric).
Over the past few years, I've come to realise that, when all is said and done, James Bond is actually a pretty terrible character. Realising that Bond films were actually good examples of an archaic power fantasy for straight white males where they could get away with mass murder while bedding and forgetting innumerable women has made me re-examine the whole series and now the franchise has shifted strictly into guilty pleasure territory for me (the films I still like, anyway - with over twenty official films there's definitely bound to be some stinkers in there). I did appreciate how the Dalton films (and, to a lesser extent, GoldenEye) tried to rehabilitate Bond's image and that is why I consider Dalton my favourite Bond actor (and reckon Brosnan got hard done by with the films he appeared in). In rebooting the series with Craig, the producers were willing to try to rebuild Bond from the ground up. Even though Casino Royale was ultimately prone to a lot of the usual Bond movie flaws in trying to establish his back-story, it was ultimately an enjoyable piece of work and a welcome addition to the Bond series. It generated so much goodwill that there was no doubt the next film would be even better, right?
Wrong.
This is the second time I've seen Quantum of Solace and the first since it came out in cinemas. I have long considered it the worst official Bond film (it's still not quite as bad as the unofficial 1960s version of Casino Royale), but I figured I should at least try to give it a second chance to see if the passage of time would help me mellow out about it. Unfortunately, following it up with the technically decent Skyfall has only served to make Quantum's flaws stand out even more.
I think Quantum's worst crime is that it makes Bond boring. Other bad Bond movies may have been bad, but they at least had some campy enjoyment like a fifty-something Roger Moore going to space or fighting Christopher Walken on top of the Golden Gate bridge. Here, the dedication to playing things completely straight serves to shoot Bond in the foot. Even picking apart the similarities to older Bond films gets tiresome. Bond goes rogue in order to avenge someone he cares about (Licence to Kill), teams up with a woman who wants her own revenge (For Your Eyes Only/The Spy Who Loved Me), while the main villain pretends to be an environmentally conscious good guy (Diamonds are Forever/Die Another Day), etc. I know that a franchise that lasts as long as Bond will tend to recycle concepts but without any interesting variations on the formula it just becomes stale and lifeless. Stale and lifeless is a pretty good way to describe just about every performance in this film. Craig plays Bond as a blandly determined stoic, Olga Kurylenko is his vengeful female off-sider who doesn't do much either, while Amalric lacks any definition that would make him stand out as a Bond villain (even in a bad way).
It also doesn't help that the plot holes and gaps in logic also stick out pretty badly even in the context of a Bond film. Early in the film, a mole has the chance to shoot Bond and M but instead shoots an extra and leads Bond on a merry chase through tunnels and across rooftops (thus wasting years of undercover work for no good reason - and the chase is boring to boot). When MI6 decides to arrest Bond, they decide that the wisest course of action is to send a single inexperienced female agent after an agent that they know is a relentless womaniser. Even the climatic showdown in a secret bunker surrounded by unstable solar cells seems like a poor excuse for the film to follow through on making all its major action setpieces revolve around the four elements (there's a plane chase in the air, a boat chase on water, a foot chase on the ground and...fire everywhere? Whatever). It doesn't help that the film is shot through with as bland an approach to making action exciting as any modern blockbuster. The camera shakes just enough to make you give up on caring about what it's trying to show you, while the rapid cutting only serves to make things even less worthy of your comprehension. No wonder they decided to get Roger Deakins of all people to shoot Skyfall. Also, despite there being an elemental motif to the action, that kind of cleverness doesn't make the action any more engaging.
Quantum of Solace may not exemplify every single bad factor about James Bond films (at least Craig's Bond isn't physically abusive towards women like the pre-Dalton actors had a tendency to be) but it showcases enough of Bond's bad qualities and combines them with some of the worst qualities of modern action cinema. A jagged, near-incomprehensible mess of a film that has absolutely nothing to offer an audience, even one who appreciates James Bond. The fact that the upcoming Bond film will also involve a secret organisation (by the way, it's weird how the super-secret Quantum organisation gets more or less forgotten about around the halfway mark of the film so Bond can instead chase a single villain, but hey, we'll add that to the pile of problems with this film) makes me hope it won't be a retread of this nonsense, but if the series can produce an absolute clunker like this once, there's always the possibility it will happen again.
Marc Forster, 2008
Following on from the events of Casino Royale, a vengeful Bond (Daniel Craig) is driven to investigate the terrorist conspiracy responsible for killing his previous love interest, which leads him to focus on a wealthy philanthropist (Mathieu Amalric).
Over the past few years, I've come to realise that, when all is said and done, James Bond is actually a pretty terrible character. Realising that Bond films were actually good examples of an archaic power fantasy for straight white males where they could get away with mass murder while bedding and forgetting innumerable women has made me re-examine the whole series and now the franchise has shifted strictly into guilty pleasure territory for me (the films I still like, anyway - with over twenty official films there's definitely bound to be some stinkers in there). I did appreciate how the Dalton films (and, to a lesser extent, GoldenEye) tried to rehabilitate Bond's image and that is why I consider Dalton my favourite Bond actor (and reckon Brosnan got hard done by with the films he appeared in). In rebooting the series with Craig, the producers were willing to try to rebuild Bond from the ground up. Even though Casino Royale was ultimately prone to a lot of the usual Bond movie flaws in trying to establish his back-story, it was ultimately an enjoyable piece of work and a welcome addition to the Bond series. It generated so much goodwill that there was no doubt the next film would be even better, right?
Wrong.
This is the second time I've seen Quantum of Solace and the first since it came out in cinemas. I have long considered it the worst official Bond film (it's still not quite as bad as the unofficial 1960s version of Casino Royale), but I figured I should at least try to give it a second chance to see if the passage of time would help me mellow out about it. Unfortunately, following it up with the technically decent Skyfall has only served to make Quantum's flaws stand out even more.
I think Quantum's worst crime is that it makes Bond boring. Other bad Bond movies may have been bad, but they at least had some campy enjoyment like a fifty-something Roger Moore going to space or fighting Christopher Walken on top of the Golden Gate bridge. Here, the dedication to playing things completely straight serves to shoot Bond in the foot. Even picking apart the similarities to older Bond films gets tiresome. Bond goes rogue in order to avenge someone he cares about (Licence to Kill), teams up with a woman who wants her own revenge (For Your Eyes Only/The Spy Who Loved Me), while the main villain pretends to be an environmentally conscious good guy (Diamonds are Forever/Die Another Day), etc. I know that a franchise that lasts as long as Bond will tend to recycle concepts but without any interesting variations on the formula it just becomes stale and lifeless. Stale and lifeless is a pretty good way to describe just about every performance in this film. Craig plays Bond as a blandly determined stoic, Olga Kurylenko is his vengeful female off-sider who doesn't do much either, while Amalric lacks any definition that would make him stand out as a Bond villain (even in a bad way).
It also doesn't help that the plot holes and gaps in logic also stick out pretty badly even in the context of a Bond film. Early in the film, a mole has the chance to shoot Bond and M but instead shoots an extra and leads Bond on a merry chase through tunnels and across rooftops (thus wasting years of undercover work for no good reason - and the chase is boring to boot). When MI6 decides to arrest Bond, they decide that the wisest course of action is to send a single inexperienced female agent after an agent that they know is a relentless womaniser. Even the climatic showdown in a secret bunker surrounded by unstable solar cells seems like a poor excuse for the film to follow through on making all its major action setpieces revolve around the four elements (there's a plane chase in the air, a boat chase on water, a foot chase on the ground and...fire everywhere? Whatever). It doesn't help that the film is shot through with as bland an approach to making action exciting as any modern blockbuster. The camera shakes just enough to make you give up on caring about what it's trying to show you, while the rapid cutting only serves to make things even less worthy of your comprehension. No wonder they decided to get Roger Deakins of all people to shoot Skyfall. Also, despite there being an elemental motif to the action, that kind of cleverness doesn't make the action any more engaging.
Quantum of Solace may not exemplify every single bad factor about James Bond films (at least Craig's Bond isn't physically abusive towards women like the pre-Dalton actors had a tendency to be) but it showcases enough of Bond's bad qualities and combines them with some of the worst qualities of modern action cinema. A jagged, near-incomprehensible mess of a film that has absolutely nothing to offer an audience, even one who appreciates James Bond. The fact that the upcoming Bond film will also involve a secret organisation (by the way, it's weird how the super-secret Quantum organisation gets more or less forgotten about around the halfway mark of the film so Bond can instead chase a single villain, but hey, we'll add that to the pile of problems with this film) makes me hope it won't be a retread of this nonsense, but if the series can produce an absolute clunker like this once, there's always the possibility it will happen again.