I may be overstating my case but I think you'll find it suitably huge.
The Opening
Much has been said of the shakey-cam. I don't believe the new Bond is very much like Jason Bourne, which is a pretty bizarre accusation anyway since the Bourne movies take so much from the Bond films to begin with. However, I can say that the criticism leveled against The Bourne Supremacy is true here. They ruined one of the best fights in TBS, against the last agent of Tredstone, by using shakeycam. They also nearly ruined the car chase here. The real problem with Shakey-Cam is the fact that it works WONDERFUL if there's not much to see. Shakeycam is great for a fight where we're supposed to see a single two people beating the c*** out of one another.
Unfortunately, it's abyssmal for a genuinely exciting car chase that utterly blows away the DAD car fight (that I actually enjoyed). It makes it more difficult to see what Bond is doing and undercuts what is on the screen. The car chase is still quite good but I would have preferred seeing it in regular camera motion. In any case, enough of this, it's been stated enough and there's no need to beat the point to death.
I don't think that there was anything gained or lost by not having the Bond barrel opening scene missing. Frankly, it would have signalled better to people that a Bond movie was beginning rather than another trailer but I didn't particularly feel it was a loss either. I do wonder why they put it at the end of the movie, however. Personally, I felt if they really wanted to continue from Casino Royale we should have had Bond put Mister White in the trunk and then we see the chase begin but I'm overall satisfied with it.
BTW, the Uzi in the face that ended the car chase? Badass. One of the best Bond action bits yet.
I'm a little surpised how unnerved I was by Mister White's interrogation. When did torture become standard operating procedure for MI6? I know there's way too much of that going on in my own government but I would like to think we'll move past this, and James Bond's roll as a hero will be somewhat tarnished by the fact that one of his incarnations had no difficulty interrogating a man with torture. The later fact that Mathis was revealed to be tortured despite no evidence against him and Bond just shrugs it off is something that also leaves me feeling cold.
The handling of Mister White is wonderful though. His utter cockiness at the realization that MI6 has no idea who Quantum is, what it does, or what it's purpose is a great moment. It's totally not the reaction the audience is expecting and helps establish him as a villain that may well eventually be revealed to our Blofeld equivalent. At this point, he hasn't done enough to Bond to justify this but he's getting very close.
His escape is also well handled and great paranoid fuel for the rest of the movie.
My only problem with the movie is the scene with Bond and his opponent hanging from ropes is just silly, like the scene where Connor Macleod and Kane fight on Bungie Cords in Highlander 3. Having them just end up fighting on the ground would have been much nicer by my standards. Not every Bond fight has to be Poetic Masterpiece.
The Theme Music
Ugh. I'm not going to hide the fact that this is my least favorite part of the movie. I'm not a fan of the music style to say the least and the fact that naked in women and sand are not something that really work very well. I would have much preferred something that incorporated the title Quantum of Solace or perhaps images of Vesper mixed with water and dust.
Maybe even the stupid Love Knot.
My least favorite of all James Bond themes.
The Movie Itself
The movie gained a star from me for this line alone.
M: When someone says that they have people everywhere, you expect it to be hyperbole. Lots of people say that. Florists use that expression. It doesn't mean that they have people in the bloody room.
I want to say that I've always been fond of SPECTRE. By the year 2008, though, Austin Powers had wrung the very last bit of menace out of the organization. Oddly enough, I suggest that Diamonds are Forever and Never Say Never Again might have done that and Austin Powers may have honestly RESTORED some dignity to the organization. James Gardener's novels certainly hadn't helped the matter and only contributed to making Spectre into a giant world domination obsessed joke.
KAOS from Get Smart, MAD from Inspector Gadget, TAROT from the James Bond RPG, Octopus from Goldeneye: Rogue Agent and FRWL, Cobra from G.I. Joe, SCUM from James Bond Junior, The Alliance from Alias, the Foundation from Chuck. Spectre has been ridiculously imitated to the point of absurdity. How do you go back to something like that and not look utterly ridiculous?
QOS does it. They play SPECTRE perfectly straight. It's an all encompassing group of businessmen, spies, and magnates that keep their agenda nebulous. The very sense of mystery about the organization is enough that we don't feel them being limited by the old rules. The fact they don't kill people like they did in Thunderball because of minor failures is also wonderful. They kill Le Chirrfe and Dominic Greene because both men ROYALLY screwed up. The audience doesn't say "Oh, my, how ruthless they are" this time. They silently nod their head that Quantum is efficient and doesn't allow deadwood.
The entire movie is laden with paranoia as James Bond decides to track down QUANTUM from the small leads that have been given them and pretty much screws up from the get go. If James actually did kill the Quantum Boardmember in the bathroom then that's actually a much huger screw up than killing the penny ante Assassin in the hotel room. It shows that James Bond isn't thinking clearly and his instincts to kill are screwing up his genuine spywork.
Still, I'm rather fond of James actually doing spywork in this film which we don't see much of. James plays a good game of what Daniel Craig established earlier for justifying James Bond's refusal to use a code name (I think Roger Moore and Lazenby were the only Bonds to do so really) in that James' best ability is to screw with the heads of villains. He counted on the Quantum members to panic when they realize they'd been made and that allowed James to take pictures of them. Ironically, the only one who was smart enough to realize that this was James' plan is Mister White, the man that I hope that they use as a Blofeld figure in future movies.
Why? Because it makes M and James' capture of him all the more ironic. Had they managed to keep Mister White then when he eventually broke, Quantum would have been completely wrapped up at the very start.
If there's one major complaint about the movie itself, is that it is the first Bond movie that I honestly think has too many action sequences. At a little over an 1:40 minutes, it's really a select few (very good) character scenes that are strung together between the action sequences. There's very little time for the movie to breathe and I think adding an extra 20 minutes to the movie would have only have improved the storyline tremendously. What made From Russia with Love so damned good was the fact that there were only a few truly good action sequences. In fact, the Train Fight between Red Grant and James Bond is one of the greatest 'fights' in 007 history yet the majority of the fight is actually James Bond just talking to Red Grant and playing on the man's greed until he can fake him out and dispose of him.
James Bond
I personally agree with the posters that James is correct in his statement that he never left. He's been "James Bond, 007" since the last movie where he goes after White. He's still suffering from Vesper's death and his need to get answers but the movie repeatedly highlights the fact that he's still able to perform his job adequately, if not up to top shape. At heart, part of this has to do with the fact that there's no General Meldrano figure for James Bond to kill. Vesper killed herself. Mister White was blackmailing her and Yusef was a contributor but neither actually wanted Vesper dead and it's an organization that destroyed her rather than an individual. James Bond can destroy Quantum but most have no idea who the hell Vesper is so it's meaningless.
James Bond IS able to get revenge in the movie. But it's not by getting hold of Yusef. In fact, James Bond fully gets to know what revenge is and what the feeling is like by disposing of Dominic Greene. James has no real personal attachment to Agent Fields beyond the fact she was nice, they had a good roll in the hay, and she helped in his escape with Camille. However, she died because of him and he damn well feels the need to make someone pay for that. Thus, 007 disposes of Dominic Greene in the most horrific manner possible. This effectively teaches 007 what comfort revenge gives....very little.
If there's one serious misstep, it's the continued attempt to play James Bond as a rogue loose cannon. There's nothing preventing James from pointing out the fact that he didn't kill the member of Special Branch. The bullets in the man's chest will undoubtedly be revealed in time not to have come from James Bond's gun. Instead, James refuses to mention it (not even in a quip like "I did throw him off a building. I didn't shoot him though. That must have been Greene's men.") It just exists to create artificial tension.
Daniel Craig manags to nail many quiet character moments for James Bond during the movie, despite the fact that it is so short. The moment where he holds Camille's head close and is going to kill her is something that works very well. I don't think that James actually intended to commit suicide himself but would he have killed Camille? Very possibly. He might also have turned himself down at the last minute and decided to rush into the burning building with her in a fireman's carry ram. Craig also shows James Bond getting utterly plastered and sells it.
One moment that should have worked but doesn't it where Craig dumps Mathis' body in a dumpster as it has no real point. He doesn't hide the police officer's bodies, so there's no reason to hide Mathis. It's just meant to be shocking. If he'd dumped the two officer's bodies then Mathis and covered them up, it would have worked much better as we realize that Bond is trying to delay the forces on his trail despite the fact that he cares deeply about Mathis.
The best moment, of course, is where Bond confronts Yusef and realizes he's in a truly ****ed up situation. If Dominic Greene had been Vesper's old boyfriend as originally planned, 007 might have gained a measure of LTK satisfaction. Dominic Greene is a complete monster and, oddly enough, a peer of James Bond. They're both larger than life beings of grandeur. Yusef is frightened out of his mind and has the courage to honestly accept his death. Killing him is like swatting an insect and it leaves Bond in an awkward position.
(I do see the Bourne comparisons though since they both go to Russia to seek a measure of solace for the murder of their loved ones and end up in a ratty apartment)
Allies
Mathis is a character that should have lived, for the simple fact that he and Bond work extraordinarily well together and it's difficult to imagine that they will be able to establish a relationship as strong as this one. I don't buy that Mathis really intends to give James Bond the time of day after being tortured but am almost willing to believe it because of the fact that he's a romantic enough to understand that a man was not going to believe his lover was the woman responsible (and he's extraordinarily cynical from all his years in spywork).
In fact, his death honestly feels like a cheap stunt and that's hardly the thing we want for this movie. I felt, oddly, the same way about the death of Zukovsky and he wasn't nearly the character that Mathis is.
Felix Leiter recieves a great deal of character development here, unfortunately, it's mostly in the context of looking like he's constipated. I buy that he's disgusted by associating with a grade A psychopath like Dominic Greene and hates his boss Beam. I do think that he needed some more scenes to fit the noir atmosphere that, he's correct, Meldrano probably wouldn't be any worse than anyone else.
Plus, I have difficulty believing the CIA would be ready and willing to jump to kill the agent of a FRIENDLY government as powerful as the U.K.
Enemies
Dominic Greene's bug eyed crazy performance is something that was well done and manages to be a high point in the movie. You'd think Quantum would be hesitant to hire people even MORE unstable than Le Chirrfe after what happened last time. I honestly wish they'd ditched his selling nature preserves and kept him a genuine environmentalist because it's just crazy enough to work for him.
One thing I also am not sure is awesome or sucks, is the fact that Dominic's fight with 007. It reminds me of Equilibrium where Preston kills everyone until he meets a fat overweight pencil pusher who succeeds in giving him the best fight of the movie. It was a cool scene to watch but took me out of the movie for a second.
QUANTUM really needs to learn to stop recruiting Ax Crazy looney toons.
I don't even count Elvis as the Chief Henchmen and instead think of General Meldrano as the closest thing approximating it.
Really, Meldrano only succeeds in being a huge South American stereotype and that's not exactly something I'm entirely fond of. On the other hand, he positively oozes menace and evil in a way that's entirely believable. You know when he exchanges a glance with the Chief of Police that he's going to rape the Hotel waitress and it's such a brief glimpse and smile that it sends chills down your spine.
Do I have any real objections to the villains? Only one. Ian Fleming was a pretty nationalistic sort and I'm not sure that using his movie series to attack a friendly nation's intelligence service is really a good idea (no matter how much I am to the left in my real world politics). I can totally by the CIA and MI6 supporting Quantum's assisted coup. I do think the movie cheated essentially by having it be a giant scam on them.
I would have much preferred it to be ACTUALLY oil and topical with Bond standing up against the national interests if they were going to honestly touch on it. SPECTRE/Quantum becoming a giant utilities company for a nation is an underwhelming plan. Like Elliot Carver's plot for overthrowing China's government.
The Bond Girls
Camille is a nice subversion on the "Bond Girls must be Bond's equal" formula. She's a Bolivian secret service agent or a former one, but she's never killed anyone. When it comes down to it, Bond is the better of the two agents but there's no attempt to sell her as Bond's equivalent in Bolivia like with Michelle Yeoh or Halley Berry's characters. This works well because, and I thank Carly Simon "Nobody does it better."
Olga Kurylenko is certainly an attractive enough woman. I have no aversion to buxom Bond girls and she certainly is a fetching enough female to be the lead Bond girl. I confess, I'm not sure that it was the best choice for a movie about Bolivia to employ a Eastern European actress even with a throwaway line that her mother was Russian. I think the movie might have been actually benefitted from some "on-location" beauty. I also respectfully disagree with Maxim's assertion shes the most attractive Bond girl of all time.
(I give that to Carol Bouquet)
Still, it would be wrong to dismiss the fact that she gives a sensitive and appropriately strong performance for the movie. I hope the Bond movies give us another subversion by having her come back as her original character and both she and Bond being in a better place. I agree with the movie's choice they didn't sleep together. Still, I wouldn't have objected to the two being shown on vacation later after the credits or something that implies they both got into a better place emotionally.
Agent Fields, ironically, is my preference out of the movie's two women. Gemma Arterton doesn't live long enough in the movie to make much more of an impression that she may not have anything under the trenchcoat and she looks very good with red hair. Plus, she has a cute accent from my side of the Pond. Still, it was a shame to eliminate her character when I think she provided a nice innocent contrast to Camille's broken bird. I've made my statement that I wish she had been Moneypenny and I stand by it.
In Conclusion
I honestly was a bit underwhelmed by a QOS. The movie was quite good and had many awesome scenes but was too short and too fast with the action scenes drowning each other out along with the story. I feel that the movie could have benefited from a few storytelling tweaks and some additional dialogue.
It's not up to the standards of Casino Royale but just because it isn't, doesn't mean that its bad by any stretch of the imagination.
3 1/2 Stars
