Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only (maybe), Octopussy, A View to a Kill, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies (maaaaybe), The World is Not Enough, and... James Bourne?
Surprised (a bit) to discover I "enjoy" Quantum of Solace. "Like" is definitely too hard a word. Like On Her Maj, it grew on me. (You can read that sentence either as "I like On Her Maj; it grew on me," or as "Like On Her Maj, Quantum grew on me." I intended the latter, but intent dies when I publish it and interpretation is up to you.) Unlike On Her Maj - in direct contradistinction to On Her Maj, in fact - the leading man is about the only watchable thing in this one.
Which is fine, because Daniel Craig is eminently watchable as James Bond, especially in this one. In fact I might go as far as to say he is the most watchable James Bond. Connery, Moore and Brosnan, well, you're there for things like "charm" and "charisma" and "screen presence" more than you're there for a "performance," no? (I know I'm offending basically everyone I know by lumping Connery and Moore/Brosnan in with Brosnan/Moore. They're all playing Boring Invincible Comic-book Superagent 007, only Connery's too bored and Moore's too old and Brosnan's screen presence is deficient compared to the other two. Get over it.) Lazenby? Nope; he works (surprisingly) well in OHMSS, but OHMSS was hardly representative of the series as a whole. While Timothy Dalton is basically exactly what James Bond "should" be - intense, ice-cold, grim, manipulative bastard played by a top-notch actor who can somehow throw "human" into that mix too - it's not quite as fun to watch as Daniel Craig, is it? That's cool; it doesn't have to be entirely Fleming-authentic if it's more fun. (Fleming once wrote a short story where somebody told Bond a story over drinks. Totally unfilmable, but the point was that drama and tragedy doesn't always need to involve master villains or goofy gadgets. It was called Quantum of Solace.) BlondBond - especially here - projects a devil-may-care attitude over an obviously tortured soul, and he gets away with it in a way that BatBale totally didn't. Reminds me a tad/a lot of Christopher Eccleston, a criminally underrated Doctor Who.
So without further adieu, my "commentary" on Quantum of Solace, the second in a series of juvenile humor, petty abuse, and inadvertent exposure of the creator's own crippling flaws. I speak of my "commentaries," not the Craig films.
Bit of a dilemma, here.
You've done gone and rebooted the Bonds. You sat out 2004 and broke the whole "one every two years" rule and in so doing delivered the very bestest Bond film since The Living Daylights (at the very least)* and arguably since OHMSS (arguably = if you don't like Dalton, in which case what the sodding hell are you doing watching his spiritual succesor?) (And finally, if you like Casino Royale more than OHMSS, I'm not entirely convinced you've seen OHMSS, but I also accept that you might be turned off by Lazenby. I respect your right to be wrong.)
*I'm quite partial to Licence to Kill as well, at least in concept/Dalto-tude and various execution bits, but that film was made in tax exile and/or absolutely looks like it.
Anyway you've gone and rebooted the Bonds and basically everyone who was trashing your bland no-name star before the film came out is now singing his praises to the high heavens.
So far so good. Only thing is, now you have to follow it up.
I'm assuming that was the logic. Having taken a break now not once but twice and survived perfectly well (financially if not quality-wise the first time), you have no other excuse beyond "crikey, gotta deliver a follow-up quickly or the punters will think we've lost our nerve" to explain why you tried making a sequel during a writer's strike and at the high point of Bournemania.
OH GOD THE CAMERA'S GONE ALL JITTERY and this is a bona fide complaint. Battlestar Galactica, even Captain America 2, I can tell what the hell's going on. Not here to see "whambangthinghappened, oh look, Bond won, shoulda seen it, it was fab." Barring anyone actually caring about, y'know, HOW Bond won, they could have saved money by just sticking in title cards that said "five minutes later" instead of filming fights.
Because that's the thing, innit, that this film's defenders (I've read/I'm poorly imitating one - Jacques Stewart, whose "The 007th Minute" eBook available for free at Commanderbond.net should be required reading even if I disagree with most of what he says about most of the films after The Spy Who Loved Me - and the massive population of the Earth suggests there must be at least one other, hence my presumptive use of the plural) go on about is that the incoherence is a metaphor for Bond's mental state, and improves over the course of the film. Holds up insofar as the final battle doesn't include random shots of scenery/horse-race/Tosca as the earlier action scenes do, but falls apart instantly when you realize you've still been shown an almost random collection of clips where two actors/stuntmen/lovely physical specimens wail on each other and it's up to your brain to make sense of it. I will give you money (not specifying how much) if, on the first time watching the film, when you get to the part where the axe goes into his foot, you can tell me who "he" is before you get to the reaction shot.
These are my thoughts as I watch footage of a bazillion pounds of steel getting scrambled get scrambled. This Daniel Craig fellow certainly can act, and he is quite rightly billed as the star of this spectacle. Never once convinced that BrosBond wasn't totally in control during his action scenes, even that time he was skidding along upside-down inside his Aston - there, I mentioned Die Another Day, let us never speak of it again - Brosnan's scaredface is not much to write about, but then again you hadn't cast an actor, had you, you'd cast a presence. Craig is a whole different beast. "Not in control" is what he is for most of this film's underwhelming (a mercy; more of it and I'd get sick) runtime.
Bond drives down a long tunnel. Inasmuch as this is a film wherein Bond treats his license to kill as an outlet for his grief now that his cuddlebunny's gone and drowned, I'm trying - and failing - not to read much into this blatant tunnel imagery.
Could just be my DVD, but the image freezes for some reason right after BlondBond says "It's time to get out." Why?
Having no wish to watch/hear/comment on the titles (very well, one comment: they're purdy) or the execrable "song" (very well, one comment: as excuses to cut my ears off go, I've heard worse. Wait no I haven't, hence the ear-removal. Look, you wanna say "This one's different," that's fine, OHMSS accomplished that without committing a crime against humanity), I shall describe this film at length, primarily as a means of getting the obligatory out of the way now so I can enjoy Daniel Craig Doing Acting during the parts of the film where I can see it properly:
Gritty, nervy "back to Fleming" actor (actor, note, as opposed to charismatic screen presence), in his second outing as James Bond, off on a highly personal mission despite whatever he calls it. Theoretically not sanctioned by MI6, prompting the best confrontation between this Bond and this M, even though they send at least one employee out "after" him and welcome him back with open arms afterwards. There's a scene that exists for no reason other than to show that Bond is obviously wracked with grief over the fate of a dead Bond Girl he won't name from a previous film, a girl whose fate is harkened back to elsewhere in this film as well and who might be the impetus for Bond's behavior for the remainder of the film's runtime. "Fairly" (a coward's adjective) likeable ally killed off offscreen (more or less) once no longer of use to the plot. Felix Leiter played by an actor reprising the role from an earlier film. Useless American tosspot gets in the way of Bond's mission. Fire plays a rather large role in the climax, set in the middle of a desert in South America, wherein the villain attacks a bloodied Bond with a sharp-edged weapon and completely fails to hit him despite Bond being unarmed and rather knackered by this point. Bond sets off an explosion towards the beginning of the climax that turns into a raging fire which consumes the enitre facility (metaphor). Bond Girl set up as a foreign secret agent (with her own slightly/greatly confused subplot wherein it briefly looks as though she's working for the villains), who is more useful driving transport and causing introspection on Bond's part than doing fights, but makes up for it by shooting one of the baddies. Villains willing to kill/screw over each other. Main villain at one point threatens revolution against a country's dictator-for-life during a monetary dispute. Secondary Bond Girl at one point wears naught but a sheet. Helicopter versus airplane, involving Bond doing the most ridiculous-looking stunt in the film. Bond escapes a gunfight via motorboat with the Bond Girl in tow. One of the good guys causes a collision involving a yacht. The artistically curious use of a "harmless" actor as a villain. The lead actor, doing Proper James Bond Acting, is cited as a great asset to the film, mostly by the film's (few) defenders, but they're absolutely right. The villain at one points makes a sartorial decision best described as "questionable." Scars visible on a Bond Girl's back, due to trauma she suffered at the hands of one of the villains, the one whose body is consumed by fire at the end. One villain's name is a mispelling of an actual word; another is an actual word. Gunbarrel technically present and accounted for, but done a tad "wrong." Despite the earnest attept at a "character arc," at the end of the film James Bond is basically the same badass superagent we know and love (if a tad more of a grim bastard than usual due to the actor playing him). Etc.
Licence to Kill.
As for Quantum of Solace, the same, but written by about ninety billion different people on the fly, shot by a man suffering seizures all the way through, and edited by a team of (poorly) trained monkeys on speed. At least Bond's suits fit this time.
New direction? Please. The shooty flashy bangy bits that the popcorn-munchers demand at the expense of "plot" and/or "realism" are still in place, and there are still two Bond Girls, one of which dies.
If I were to nitpick, I have to say I'm not convinced by Bond's motivation either time. Yeah Vesper was hot and she had a bit of attitude. Thing is, He's James Bond. He doesn't grieve, unless you've seen a very select few and extremely obscure earlier films. Weird to do an entire film on this. That said, infinitely better than the Diamonds Are Forever approach of "Bond's pissed, right? Oh look, sight gag!"
After the titles, I turn up the volume in time to watch Mr. Slate get interrogated. The Americans are going to be none too pleased about this: Mr. Stewart did this joke (he loves this film in a manner that has caused me to appreciated it more), so I'll refrain from ripping him off entirely. Not at all displeased myself, unless the implication is that wringing information out of Very Bad Men by Dubious Means is wrong. Doubtful, because M's doing it, and M is supposed to be the voice of reason in contrast to Bond's unhinged-ness here. For contrast, see the very next film, yeah?
Curious: what would happen if you took the characterization from Quantum and the cinematography of Skyfall? I'd call it the best Bond film ever made, probably. Shame how those two worked out, Skyfall being very pretty to look at but eager to make your brain go "....nope," whereas Quantum's more or less an unwatchable film with an amazing character arc.
Quite like the random introduction of Mr. Mitchell here - assume it's his last name, though unclear as to why they're using his name at all. Did Edmure Tully have a name in the last one? And more importantly: why the frick are they using this guy's name in hearing difference of a Really Bad Guy?
That little jaw-twitch D.Craig does when he sees Vesper's picture: I love that almost as much as I love T.Dalt's reaction when Della invokes Tracy's memory and oh look I've done it again.
We're all in our little offices thinking the MI6 - "the" MI6? - is listenting to our every word, but, oh, also, we have people everywhere, isn't that right, Benedict Mitchell? Not sure how that works; he's chuffed that they don't know who "we" are but he also has a mole inside "the" MI6. I do like it, though. Films involving a betrayal, no matter how slight > films that don't. Not in any way a reflection on my mental state, promise. Also that formula fails to account for OHMSS, but then so do a lot of people who like to pretend to be "Bond Fans." (Watch it, that's all I ask, you're entitled to not like it once you've seen it, but not before.)
Can I keep doing this? Please? Going on wild amusing (to me) divergent tangents during the "action?" Oh, hang on, do wanna point out - scene of the crowd in the square after Bond and Mitchell have gone all chasey shooty shakycam bangbang through it, tending their wounds, quite like that. Last time actions had consequences in a Bond, we were just finding out about this Star Wars thingy. Even The Dalton, whose films I will defend until the end of time, didn't get stuff like this. 'cept for that one scene in Licence to... oh.
M's alive, apparently, and her apparent death-by-traitorious-MI6 agent in the previous scene is patently a blatant bit of foreshadowing for the next film. They don't make these things up on the fly, you know, except when they do, i.e., this one, per everyone involved with it but especially Daniel Craig, bless him for never sugarcoating anything just like his BlondBond.
Suspecting now that my enjoyment of this film has entirely to do with a) my ability to do an extroardinarily fractured "commentary" over an extraordinarily fractured "film" and b) the fact that the protagonist is, like myself, a tad unhinged. I quite like seeing Bond like this. Surprised, actually, that I don't think higher of Quantum of Solace, given how I like to bang on Skyfall and For Your Eyes Only for their inconsistent "tone" and this one's all bleak and broken and depressing and fractured all the way through. Ah, but "tone" falls under "execution" alongside such things as "plot" and "cinematography," and that explains much and excuses little.
Bond and M have visited Mitchell's flat. I think this is a flat. I'm not entirely sure because I'm an American and flats are something we try to avoid, especially on roadways populated mostly by trucks.
Mitchell/Mitchum(? Craig seems to have read a different script) has been M's bodyguard for a large number of years. Is he the only mole in MI6? Is this ever followed up on? No wonder Voldemort wanted M's resignation in the next film; between getting MI6 bombed twice, captured once, having two separate rogue agents try to kill her/England, and not properly screen her own frickin' bodyguard, yeah, the evil queen of numbers needs the shove.
But back to Mitchell being the only mole in MI6 (which apparently he is, because there aren't any HYDRA-style murderings afterwards). Does that mean that Mr. White's entire escape plan relied on griefy angsty ragey Bond dragging him off to M? Must have. OH NO THIS IS THE DARK KNIGHT AGAIN WHERE THE VILLAIN RELIES ON THE HERO TO DO EXACTLY THESE THINGS PLEASE MAKE IT STOP ETC etc.
Advantage to not having the foggiest during these action scenes, recognizing one won't have the foggiest no matter how hard one tries, and therefore not bothering: plenty of time to think during what would otherwise be the mind-numbing shooty flashy bangy bits. A curious decision, inasmuch as most of the preceeding 21 had gone the opposite route: Bond is fighting a Bad Foreign Man. Be entertained. Bond is kissing a Bond Girl. Be entertained. Bond is using an Implausibly Cool Gadget at an Implausibly Appropriate Opportunity. Be entertained. Bond is Being Witty. Er, roll your eyes. Doesn't matter who these things are or what they want, we're safe in the knowledge that Bond wins. Quantum of Solace? Bond is talking. Bond is emoting. Bond is coping. Be entertained. We try new and innovative things like "plot" and "character" and "tone" and "holding the camera steady" although that last one never made it out of the testing phase.
Something something tagged money and guys who aren't Q, and at least they don't try to pretend these guys are Q, should have retired the character when Desmond died - yeah okay there was that time that ConnBond went chasing off to Nassau because he saw a priddy laydee on a postcard (Thunderball), so whatever excuse they came up with this time to get Bond to this film's Pretty-Looking Place You Wouldn't Want To Actually Live In (PLPYWWTALI, pronounced "plopywatali"), fine, it's not really relevant to the "plot."
Bond goes to a hotel room in PLPYWWTALI, Haiti, and Does Violence. This is the part where, on re-watch, I stopped griping about the jittercam and tried to remember exactly how long it takes for Bond to not frickin' murder every single lead thrown across his path. Then he goes and gets yet another hotel receptionist fired in exchange for a briefcase. I've heard worse exchanges (insert Connery/Lazenby, Moore/Dalton, Dalton/Brosnan or Brosnan/Craig joke here as your favorite/least favorite Bond taste dictates).
Actually I could see perfectly well what happened to Mr. Slate - Bond stabbed him in the neck and then in that major artery in the leg. I don't know what "that major artery in the leg" is because I'm not a psychopath. I'm merely a sociopath with an OCD-like fixation on the Bond films.
Somehow Olga Kurylenko In Brownface mistakes Bond for a geologist. Maybe she's seen A View to a Kill, a film which ended with a demented Frenchman attacking Bond with an axe.
Anyway I can understand OKiB mistaking Bond for a man she's never met - curious, though. Harder to swallow is that Mr. Slate's Motorcycle Getaway Man doesn't know what he looks like either.
Enter Dominic Greene. He's a weak little twerp for a Bond villain. He's also the best/least worst of the three Craig villains so far, mainly because he doesn't have a grotesque deformity and/or psychoses (now's not the time to get into it, but I didn't believe for a second that Silva was ever an MI6 agent). Did the film need a "stronger" villain? The Man With the Golden Gun (supposedly) has a "strong" villain and look how that turned out. More impotently (not a typo), he's great in the sense of "You, blond-haired blue-eyed ape-man, you run around and you do fights and you shag laydees, and meanwhile here I am, poncy weakling, and I rule the world." Mike Myers may deserve no credit whatsoever for the appearance of Number Two, but he deserves all the credit in the world for Number Two's "take over the world via corporate means" approach.
Also, equally important, his cover is a liberal do-gooder nonprofit, and that warms the cockles of my neocon heart.
So Camille is a spy and Dominic knows she's a spy and she knows that he knows, so why these two aren't trying to kill each other is bizarropants. Also Camille has a burn scar on her back. I don't know what a burn scar on brownface looks like so I assumed it was sand the first time I saw it.
Bond's "card" for "Universal Exports" reads "R. Sterling." Not a Mad Men reference, but rather back to The Spy Who Loved Me. Jacques Stewart insists that this film is loaded with references to that one (I counted one other one that counts, and mention it below); he also hates Q (as opposed to non-Llewelyn Qs), so a) I'm beginning to see why he loves this film, and b) I question his judgment. Politely, because I'm (very poorly) ripping off his style. (Free. eBook. Here. Vastly enjoyable, even if I disagree with more or less the entire second half.)
And now it is time for Bond to do Boat Chasing. It is shorter than the one in Live and Let Die. At the end Bond dumps Camille in someone else's arms. "Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? She's just dead." Wait. Wrong film. I thought we were trying something new and different and uncomfortable.
And now we get to the political "subtext" of this film. I will be slightly more subtle than the film is. Ready? GETTING IN BED WITH SNAKES IN ORDER TO KNOCK OVER LEFTIST REGIMES IS A BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD IDEA, YEAH? Twenty years ago you were teaming up with the mujahadeen. Awkward.
So the CIA wants Bo(r)n(e/d) dead. It's not going to be a problem for the CIA to knock over an MI6 agent. What a wonderful world we live in. "Tone."
Goes to Austria to see a performance of Tosca. In doing "research" for this post, I discovered that Tosca is about a guy who shields his friend from the authorities and gets killed for his trouble. The next character to be introduced is Mathis. Just sayin'.
So. HYDRA I mean QUANTUM - totally diff'rent orgs, promise. It is honestly a totally different thingy from SPECTRE and I shall be quite upset if, now that EON has the right to the latter, they just integrate QUANTUM into it. SPECTRE was all loony plots to cause WWIII/sterility/SPAAAAAAAACE LAZERS; QUANTUM/HYDRA actually took over the world by infiltration, rather than destruction/extortion.
Anyway FERMION meets at a theatre and the theatre employees evidently know to give them the special bags (no not those kinds) that have earpieces in them. So, they own a theatre. So they could, say, lurk backstage somewhere, having thoroughly swept for bugs, rather than transmit their messages back and forth where anyone could intercept them. QUANTUM is subatomic but not exactly sub rosa. This gloriously ostentatious form of meeting really puts the old Blofeld/Dr. Evil chair'o'doom offices to shame, dunnit? I wish to join this organization.
Bond, the right twerp, blows their cover before they bother explaining what they're up to. In his defense, if this film were any shorter it would be a tellymovie. James Bond as a TV series might not be too bad an idea, actually - the films are certainly episodic enough - but given that DaltBond was more or less killed off over a lawsuit about such rights perhaps it's an idea best left unused. We would hate for BlondBond to meet an untimely demise, unless of course they decided to wrap up the entire franchise, which they never will do because $. Killing off M is as much of a "shock ending" as we can hope for.
Their cover blown, the PROTON elite bolt, because they're dummies. Bond takes their pictures, because he's also a dummy. "Frederick Gray, Minister of Defence, was arrested today because he got up to take a tinkle at precisely the wrong moment."
Bond throws somebody's bodyguard off a roof. Alternatively, Bond is flung down into a trap door and shot and/or stabbed (in the heart, by a woman. Metaphor!) Not entirely sure because Tosca is happening and evidently Tosca is more important than narrative coherence. Well, narrative coherence isn't for everyone.
Bond throws a man off a roof after said man tries to grab his clothing. I promised a second reference to The Spy Who Loved Me. I hope you are happy.
Whose bodyguard does he throw off a roof? Dunno; he's somebody in the British Government, but is he important? Dunno. Is he even in this film? Dunno. Doesn't it seem like a good idea for BOSON members to know their own members' bodyguards so that, oh, say, nobody could impersonate one of them? ...nah. Death is cheap in BondWorld. Like I said, "tone."
Hrmph, it's Mr. M in the background. He apparently dies at some point between this one and the next one because nobody but James Bond is allowed to have loose ends when an "important" character dies.
Bond and M have a conversation wherein she tells him to come in and report and he says no. This sums up every conversation they have for the rest of the film, except the last one.
Bond needs to get to Bolivia so he calls on Mathis. They have a late night drink on the plane and it's nice.
Ssssso wait. Agent Fields had orders to turn Bond around and put him right back on a plane, what was she going to do, make him wait at the airport (actually a smart idea seeing as how Bond shot up an embassy last time 'round)?
Our cover is "teachers on sabbatical" and that is why I am only wearing a coat. Yup. This is the sort of "cover nobody believes but lets them draw their own conclusions that are also wrong" cover, yes?
I can't find the stationery. Awhadawhadawhatnow? Corfuzzled here. I was under the impression that Bond was, y'know, grieving over wassface. Guess not. Also that has to be the lamest pickup line ever, and I thought BlondBond was supposed to be more "realistic."
Then they go to a party wherein Fields trips Bowlcut - very menacing, that henchman - and Dominic and Camille fail to kill each other (or make any serious attempt to do so) once again. Yawn. Also is it just me or is there a weird audio edit in the middle of Green's treehugger speech?
Bond drives out with Camille but get pulled over by the cops. You know, the ones that Mathis was supposed to have paid off. I wonder if something could have gone horribly wrong.
Bahahahahah Mathis is in the trunk just like Mr. Greene was at the beginning of the film and just like how somebody was in somebody's truck in Casino Royale. Neat. Heroes and villains all mixed up. Somebody should write a book about it.
Bond takes his money and tosses him in a dumpster. "Tone."
So then Bond goes to charter a plane, knowing full well that the guy he's borrowing the plane from is going to sell him out... yeah that sounds safe. Bond tells Camille that "his sources" have told him she's Bolivian Secret Service. I thought he was cut off from MI6 by this point.
Our hero, flying a plane through a canyon, manages to kill one of his pursuers by obscuring his view and oh look it's Independence Day. Then James Bond falls out of an airplane and has to grapple with someone else in midair and oh look it's Moonraker again. How original. Would opening the parachute that late even accomplish anything?
M is hauled before Someone With Pull. No idea who. No idea what this scene is doing in this film beyond setting up Skyfall.
There's another quite bonding - not Bonding - scene down in the cave, and then Bond gets back to his hotel and finds leftovers from Goldfinger and, yep, Licence to Kill waiting for him. He escapes from the other agents because, once again, he is the only one worth a damn. (Weirdly, M agrees to let Bond's little helper go without comment. That seems a bit out of character here.)
I have a question here. If "the Americans are going to be none too pleased" about how royally Bond done screwed up the Le Chiffre thing, why is Felix Leiter, more or less the point man on the Le Chiffre thing and thus, one presumes, the man most badly burned by the Americans being none too pleased by Bond's screwup, helping Bond? "Yes, you wound up with your nadgers mangled and your Aston totaled and your cuddlebunny drowned, but by golly that Greene fellow's got to be stopped and you sound quite like the right man for the job."
So then the payoff is made for a coup that we never see happen. Regimes come and go but nothing ever changes. "Tone."
"You and I had a mutual friend" is the shittiest one-liner in the franchise. Haha no it's not, but it is pretty horrible by any standards that aren't Bond.
Now, I don't know whether this next bit is meant to "homage" Licence to Kill or The Man With the Golden Gun - the "lair," such as it is, is powered by something ridiculously reactive (Golden Gun) such that one tiny incident (both films) is enough to set it off and have it burn the whole place down (both films). I was assuming it was a Licence to Kill reference because I can't imagine anyone in their right mind referencing The Man With the Golden Gun.
One hell of a panty shot courtesy of Queen Talisa Stark. Fairly certain the MPAA were asleep or popping Advil. David Arnold starts ripping off John Barry's score from Body Heat, itself a ripoff of the chord progression from On Her Maj. Someone gets an axe in their toes. It's incredibly shoddy camerawork/editing here inasmuch as you have two consecutive cuts where the camera crosses the 90-degree line and shoots the action from the wrong direction, thus making everyone think the axe went into Bond's foot.
Camille grabs/punches Medrano in the balls, which is awesome. Bond's stuntman gets some fire on his back as he runs to her - hey, uh, maybe if you shook the camera more I wouldn't notice that, but you didn't so I did.
There's some foofery on the internet about Bond abandoning Greene to rescue Camille. This isn't Thunderball; somebody with an injury to their foot/ankle isn't going to get very far. What ultimately happens to Greene is immensely satisfying and karmic. Not sure revenge isn't awesome, frankly. Although Bond doesn't think the dead care about vengeance. No, but the living do.
Finally we have a little bit of denoument. Bond lying in wait in a darkened room for his prey - exactly how Casino Royale started, except Bond is noticeably emotional this time whereas he was Mr. Cool four hours ago. Still, as far as "Bond holds a gun on the bad guy" scenes go, it doesn't beat the one with Pushkin in The Living Daylights.
Curious ending. The only good scene with Q in it in the next film is a patent call back to this, what with talk about whether or not to pull the trigger. I think that's what they were talking about. But anyway the guy's arrested and it's actually quite awesome and Bondy even if he doesn't just shoot the bugger - though honestly, "just shoot the bugger" is more SeanConBond's son Indy's deal, innit? BondJamesBond has an irritating tendency to tolerate the villain for two hours, dine with him, golf with him, steal his missus, and then and only then blow him up with a laser watch, or worse yet, get the villain's ex-missus to do it. The stinker.
Also there's one line of dialogue about how M sorted things out with the Americans, somehow. Well that was awfully convenient.
The last shot of the film is Vesper's necklace in the snow. Dark on light. I am so very tempted to draw a comparison to the last shot of On Her Maj, which is the bullet hole in the Aston Martin's windscreen, light on dark. They both even have a gentle ripple going up and to the left. It could just be me. See for yourself:
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| Yes, I will use any excuse I can to post this shot. |
This totally should have been sung over the end credits. They even worked that six-note motif into the rest of the score, for frick's sake. (Song by Shirley Bassey so clearly intended to be used in the film that they incorporated it into the film's soundtrack? Hello Thunderball.)
22 films in and these things are still watchable. Y'know, the talky bits. It's Octopussy in reverse. No, wait, the plot didn't make a lick of sense there either. Diamonds Are Forever in reverse. Yeah, that's the one. Diamonds was pretty to look at but bereft of any sort of meaning or purpose, and pains me to say it (lie) but SeanCon was patently bored/boring in that one. Quantum is almost impossible to watch when it was trying to do "spectacle" and impossible to tear one's eyes away from (ouch) when it wasn't. Is that an apt metaphor? Dunno.
Ah. You know what it is? It's the polar opposite of Star Wars. The whole thing, both the actual films and the shite "prequels"/toy adverts. Lucas's ear for dialogue was positively atrocious and his actors pale in comparison to Mr. Craig (though Alec Guiness does a passable later-day ConBond impression). On the other hand, Lucas knew how to make his shooty flashy bangy bits watchable and, dare I say, entertaining.
Quantum of Solace is a great film, aside from the fact that you can't tell what the frick's going on in any given frame other than Daniel Craig is having a very bad day. Which as far as I'm concerned is worth the DVD price. But not the Blu-Ray.
I've said some things I perhaps shouldn't have said, and was more caustic towards James Bonds not named Craig or Dalton than I care to be, so I want to reiterate that I don't think anybody was horribly miscast in the role of James Bond, Brosnan or Moore or even Lazenby (although for the latter this opinion is strictly limited to the one film he did, as he was quite unsuited to deal with what they flung at Sir Roger, but then again I'm not convinced that anyone but Sir Roger could get away with dressing up as a clown - and I imagine Dalton would have just furiously resigned on the spot if they'd asked him). Sometimes you wanted steady and stoic presences; sometimes you wanted intense and nervy actors.
James Bond will return. Caustic Commentaries will return. The republic still stands.
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