Quantum of Solace
Directed by Marc Forster
MGM, 2008
By Leo K. Moncel
I feel badly for director Marc Forster and the writing team charged with bringing Bond back again. The Bond property is so familiar to audiences that the task of reinventing the Bond series is tantamount to being asked to reinvent the hamburger. If the new recipe is too different, we’ll complain it’s not a burger at all. If the recipe goes unchanged, we’ll tell you we’re sick of hamburgers and ask what we paid $12.50 for. Those of us who were so delighted with Casino Royale as a departure from form were hoping for more of the same this round. The paradox is, if new director Marc Forster (Stranger Than Fiction) followed the mold of Royale too closely, he’d actually risk pissing us off by dishing out more of the same. Perhaps trying to avoid said pitfall, Quantum of Solace emerges as a bit of a compromise. In many ways the film is a step back towards the larger, classic Bond flicks, yet there’s enough of the Royale texture in this picture to create a genuine conflict of styles. At times the conflict produces some satisfying results and at other times things get ugly.
Quantum of Solace gets going when MI6 realizes they’ve been infiltrated by the Quantum group, a syndicate that wasn’t even on their radar. James Bond is dispatched to Haiti to learn what he can about the Quantum group, but privately he stays preoccupied with finding the man responsible for the death of Vesper (from Casino Royale), a lost love that seems to be weighing more heavily on Bond’s heart than he’d care to admit. In Haiti, Bond crosses paths with Camille, the belle of a shifty fellow named Dominic Greene, who seems to be in bed with some rough characters in Bolivia. Investigating Greene, Bond’s actions inevitably fly off the handle; judged as a loose cannon, he’s dismissed from MI6. Bond even antagonizes the CIA who are in the midst of cutting deals with Greene, earning him some more bullets in his direction. Bond and Camille uncover a large conspiracy in Bolivia that threatens a people and environment. Meanwhile Bond continues to be plagued by the loss of Vesper.
The plot is far more complicated in detail and includes one character who is nearly extraneous, existing only to squeeze a couple of character moments out of Bond. Craig, as Bond, doesn’t seem to bring the same level of commitment to the role this time around. There are a few reactions and line deliveries he does take in wonderfully unexpected directions, but for much of the film it seems he’s slogging his way through action sequences or dry exposition he doesn’t really want to be involved in. The supporting players are not exceptional either. Olga Kurylenko does a one-note strong-but-hurt performance and Mathieu Amalric has decided to “play a villain,” which is poison for a role that could have been more. Dame Judi Dench, contrarily, is razor sharp returning as M.
Your motivation is to run holding a gun.
All in all though, it’s not an actor’s movie, and nor does it need to be. Like any good Bond film, it succeeds in large part on the strength of its action sequences. So of course it’s really vexing when an action sequence tanks. There are three crucial sequences that are destroyed by the same obvious and massive flaw — extraneous crosscutting! While one pivotal moment is occurring, our attention is being drawn equally and simultaneously towards an action of no consequence (the horse race and the opera). The result? We cannot invest in the action of significance. In the final use of conspicuous crosscutting, both moments are significant and each moment gets undercut by the technique.
Where the film succeeds is in its engagement with the contemporary and the real. When James Bond travels to Haiti, it really looks like a third world country, from the congested streets to the rundown courtyards to the ugly drapes at the cheap hotel. The message of the film, though delivered somewhat ham-fistedly in the characters’ dialogue, is sober and relevant. We are not in the old Bond world where the Russians were the bad guys and with enough guts and guns a sharp cookie like Bond could put them in their place. The new sphere of global relations is a convoluted, ugly realm where it’s nigh on impossible to keep your hands clean.
Let’s hope, for the next kick at the can, the creative team stays focused on the larger realities they seem to understand well. And honestly, it wouldn’t hurt them to give Forster or whoever settled on having those crosscut sequences in the fine cut the boot.
Great review. I liked the opening hamburger parallel – states the problem in its own vernacular, and I get a clear sense of the strengths and weaknesses of this latest tongue-twister titled Bond film.
Thanks, D.L. Korchynski