Half-Assed Movie Reviews

January 12, 2009 and March 31, 2009:  Quantum of Solace

Apparently the reviewer commitment here at Half-Assed Movie Reviews is so half-assed, that a movie I originally saw in the theatre came out on video before I even got around to reviewing it the first time.  Not being one to miss an opportunity, I will take advantage of this situation and comment on both viewings at the same time.

Quantum of Solace is the second Daniel Craig installment in the long-running James Bond series of films, following Casino Royale a couple of years ago.  Casino Royale gave us a refreshing new interpretation of the character by a new actor, one which much more closely represented Bond as written in Ian Fleming’s books than the earlier incarnations with Pierce Brosnan and particularly Roger Moore.  Craig’s Bond is physically tougher, and flying much more by the seat of his pants rather than suavely acting like he is assured of victory at all times.  I have to imagine this is much closer to the actual experience of being a spy, since the very definition of the job is to be hung out on a limb by one’s own employer.

This film picks up directly following the story in Casino Royale, rather than being a completely separate episode, as Bond digs deeper into the reason for his beloved Vesper Lynd’s betrayal.  He uncovers a massive worldwide criminal organization which has so far flown under the radar of government intelligence agencies.  They are showing an unnatural interest in Bolivia, and Bond chases their top executive around the world in order to figure out the connections among the players, and find out who is posing a threat to his boss “M” (Judi Dench, who brings incredible class and weight to these films since she joined the gang nearly a decade and a half ago).  Along the way there are women, car chases, a boat chase, and a building blowing up.  My sense upon first viewing this film was that it flirted with incomprehensibility, but never quite went over the edge (I had re-watched Casino Royale not long before).  On my second viewing, I found that the story made a lot more sense, and the double-crosses among the various good guys and bad guys, tied in with the previous film, came together much more smoothly.  The runtime is quite short for a Bond film, barely 1 hour and 40 minutes rather than the 2 hours plus to which we’ve become accustomed, and it suits the scale of this story well, never feeling rushed but also not dragging at all.

Casino Royale was so successful as a reboot of the franchise, it was inevitable that Quantum of Solace would disappoint some.  There are legitimate issues with this entry, but overall I found it to be faithful to the expectations, and even embracing the typical Bond audience in a way that Casino Royale, with its globetrotting but still intimate scale, was unable to do for those expecting more in the way of chases and explosions.  A Bond movie can be smart and complex and still include those elements.

While as a kid I enjoyed “Q” and his introduction near the start of each film of Bond’s gadgets (all of which would be precisely what was needed at some point in the story to get him out of some impossible jam), the technique seemed out of place in the later Pierce Brosnan entries despite the new energy John Cleese brought to the role upon Desmond Llewelyn’s passing.  In Quantum of Solace, the only gadget Bond uses is a cellphone, which while equipped with a super-duper camera and excellent data connectivity, doesn’t push the boundaries of plausibility as in the past.  A PDA is of course an essential tool for a modern-day spy, to keep in touch with home base, since database queries and other research done by the specialists at home are part and parcel of picking apart the complex global conspiracies and crimes in this day and age.

Not everyone will love Quantum of Solace, but I came away from it wanting to see it again (both times), which I totally didn’t for the late-1990s James Bond entries.  Has anybody seen The World is Not Enough more than once?