QUANTUM OF SOLACE
2008, MGM/20th Century Fox, $34.98 (SD), $39.99 (BR), 106m 12s
By Tim Lucas
Named for a short story in Ian Fleming’s valedictory James Bond collection OCTOPUSSY, QUANTUM OF SOLACE—the 22nd film in the principal 007 series—joins with its predecessor CASINO ROYALE [reviewed VW 131:40] to form not a single, ef- ficient attaché case but a sort of portmanteau. One of the most daring and successful reboots in film history, CASINO ROYALE introduced Daniel Craig as a harder, leaner, rougher-edged Bond embarking not only on a life of danger, but a life of sophis- tication; it told the story of how this agent, still early enough in his craft to feel the lessening im- pact of his kills, took the hard, direct knocks to the heart that made him ruthless, courtesy of US Treasury Department official Vesper Lynd (Eva Green). Hav- ing died with the appearance of having betrayed Bond, Vesper’s ghost haunts the agent in this, the series’ only direct sequel, in which he tracks the men respon- sible for Vesper’s death and learns Lesson 2 in his unsenti- mental education: to serve MI6 rather than his own personal agendas.
The shortest of the Bond films and wearing a misplaced sense of younger-brother insecu- rity toward the Bourne series too obviously on its sleeve, QUAN- TUM OF SOLACE makes the mistake a few Bond clunkers
Daniel Craig returns as James Bond 007 in QUANTUM OF SOLACE, the first direct sequel (to CASINO ROYALE) in the entire Bond series.
have made, in adhering to the stylistic transience of its time (disco, techno, now breakneck editing that nearly qualifies as strobing) rather than aspiring to the graceful, gravid timelessness of the Bond classics. The root of the problem may be German- born director Marc Forster, who has made some fine films (MONSTER’S BALL, FINDING NEVERLAND), but whose com- parative youth (born 1969) makes him naturally more at- tenuated to matters of fashion and places his style at odds with the sophistication and life expe- rience of the directors who carved out this genre: Terence Young, Guy Hamilton, and even the later John Glen of the Roger Moore/ Timothy Dalton films all made their earliest series entries in their fifties. Granted, Craig is a younger man’s Bond but he needs a world to inherit and CA- SINO ROYALE comes a good deal closer to acknowledging that mark than QUANTUM OF SO- LACE. As a sequel, it is half a story, a piece of the puzzle; it does not quite stand alone and makes Bond something he never was before: a serial hero. Beginning with one of those differently named theme songs (“Another Way To Die” by Alicia Keys and Jack White) that grudg- ingly admits the chosen title is a lox, QUANTUM begins with an almost incoherently edited Aston Martin chase through the Carerra marble yards of Northern Italy (and an autostrada tunnel previ- ously used in Mario Bava’s DAN- GER: DIABOLIK, 1968) as Bond escorts his CASINO ROYALE cli- max capture Mr. White (Jasper Christensen) in the trunk back to an MI6 stronghold. There, White alludes to his membership in a powerful secret organization with representatives everywhere, a threat cemented when M’s (Judi Dench) personal assistant opens
fire on her and Bond. White is wounded in the scuffle, but makes his escape while Bond pursues the bought-out PA to his death. Learning from M that the body of Vesper’s boyfriend Yusef Kabira, washed ashore, was a concocted double, Bond sets out to find the man who be- trayed her, to avenge her, and also follow leads to the heads of the secret organization, Quan- tum—a 21st century counterpart to the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. of the Fleming novels and the first six Bond films, ending with ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (OHMSS, 1969) and thereafter contaminated by association with Kevin McClory’s 40 year liti- gation against Fleming and EON Productions.
By tracing the double agent’s funds to a man in Port au Prince, Haiti, Bond encounters a double of his own: Camille (Olga Kuryl- enko), who, like him, is conse- crated to vengeance against someone working with Quantum, in her case, General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio), a would-be Bo- livian dictator responsible for the rape and murder of her mother and sister. In the film’s most en- grossing setpiece, a masterpiece of directorial tension, production design and cutting worthy of as- sociation with the train se- quence in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963) and the ski chase in OHMSS, Bond flushes out the heads of Quantum at a per- formance of “Tosca” at the Bregenz Festival House in Aus- tria. This leads to Bond’s iden- tification of several high-placed members, including self-styled eco-philanthopist Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) of Greene Planet, a past lover of Camille’s who has ordered her death. Greene’s so-called Tiara Project, a plan for opening a se- ries of eco-parks around the world to prevent its collapse, is
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