A is for a purple-faced Alan Partridge shouting "STOP GETTING BOND WRONG!!!!!!!!", forgetting, of course, that it's actually impossible to get Bond wrong (or at least curiously difficult to do so). I mean, you can't even get him wrong if you put him in outer space (mind you, I say this as a lover of MOONRAKER, a film I understand some Bond fans Refuse to Accept™, although I feel sorry for such people) or have him played by a blond little squirt whose face suggests an experiment to mate Vladimir Putin with Sid James. Indeed, the more you go in directions that - on paper, at least - seem to guarantee an outcome of "getting Bond wrong", the more likely you are to get him stunningly right. Counterintuitively enough.
See, Bond is nothing if not a broad church, and I honestly don't believe it possible for a Bond fan to be a "traditionalist". I mean, think about it. How many franchises have chopped and changed styles as much as Bond (both literary and cinematic), virtually always coming out stronger for it?
I always find it bizarre when Bond fans appear resistant to change, for change is the one thing that has always saved the series' bacon. Indeed, I think a Bond fan who's resistant to change is almost a contradiction in terms. Eon has always been smart enough to know when to shake up The Formula™, and it's in change that you'll find the lifeblood of Bond, the very reason for its extraordinary longevity and success.
And if there's one thing even a little green man from Mars probably knows about QUANTUM OF SOLACE, it's that it's
Bold. And different.
Now, C is for Craig Daniels. I feel it's almost unnecessary to mention Cregg, for at this point in the long and glorious history of 007 our Dan really ought to go without saying. His only serious rival is the Connery of the first three films. Gratuitous and unpleasant though it may be to boost the current incumbent by slagging his predecessors, the others (save for Sean) are basically just
ing wankers by comparison. Craig owns James Bond. You may think Eon and Ian Fleming Publications own James Bond, but they don't - he's owned by the Cragmeister. End of.As everybody's favourite blinger with a slick trigger finger for Her Majesty ("That's because you know what I can do with my slick trigger finger, Ma'am"), Craig is absolutely flawless. Flawless!
Don't tell me that the PTS of QoS doesn't show 007 at his absolute badass bestest. I thought GOLDENEYE had a terrific start, that GOLDFINGER had the daddy of all PTSes, that CASINO ROYALE relaunched our boy with a bang, that THE SPY WHO LOVED ME started well, that TWINE and DAD had decent pre-credits sequences. Well, you know what?
I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW I WAS BORN!!!!!!!!
This car chase. Its balls-to-the-wallness. Its brevity. Its utter coolmother[censored]erness. Its wonderful opening shot and its, erm, intercutting and that. It's---- Dude, how I'm even still here to tell the tale....
The Editing of the action scenes in the early part of this flick is so SWEEEEEEEEEEEET that editors Matt Chessé and Richard Pearson should instead have been credited as Juxtapositioners of Juicy Stuff That's So Sweet It's Like Sugar (told ya my stabs at humour would be poor, didn't I?). The Palio pursuit makes Bourne (yes, I've mentioned him - sue me) look like Grandpa Simpson. It makes John McClane look like John McCain (oh, shut up, Loom, you're not funny).
And I'll tell you what I love about the Palio stuff, sadistic though it makes me sound: I love it that
Spoiler
. It's something I've wanted to see in Bond since, well, ever. (Geeks may be reminded of an episode in NEVER DREAM OF DYING.) Makes it more gritty, like. Seriously, though, it's a touch that carries a real charge.The makers of QUANTUM OF SOLACE made a smart choice in hiring Herr Doktor Forster, for the bald boffin's visual flair is a thing to behold. He's a stylish little blighter, I'll give him that. And in collaboration with colleagues like production designer Dennis Gassner and a director of photography who for the moment shall remain nameless 'coz his surname doesn't begin with an H, he's given us a Bond yarn with such an abundance of beautiful images that it's up there not only with the likes of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and CASINO ROYALE but also with the works of Wong Kar Wai and his cinematographical cohort Chris Doyle. But it ain't all fashion mag spread stuff, oh no - I never reckoned, for instance, that we'd ever in a Bond flick see such a realistically grotty London skyline as the one that's visible through the windows of a villain's flat. I didn't quite know what to make of it, like much in this movie. But I liked it a lot.
I is, of course, for Ian Fleming, without whom, etc. Moving on swiftly (to quote Terry Christian):
Jason Bourne. Which starts with a J. As does James Bond. Did you see what I did there? Now, look, let's not pretend that Jason Bourne has not been an influence - such a dodging of the facts insults the intelligence. That Bond has always absorbed outside influences (whether themselves Birthed By Bond™ or not) is no disgrace to Bond, and is also a huge reason for the continued success and relevance of 007. The day that the Bond series takes its finger off the pulse is the day that it dies. And as a Bourne fan as well as Bond fan I'm delighted by the Bourne influence on the Craig era. Eon picked the right role model. As usual.
As with the last two Bourne outings, THE BOND SUPREM----, sorry, QUANTUM OF SOLACE doesn't feature much Kiss Kiss (although it does boast some genuinely erotic, erm, little touches [fnarr]), concentrating instead on Bang Bang. Which is something that it does bloody well.
Although I still maintain that the dogfight/freefall is a fundamentally Brosnanesque affair that doesn't belong in what is otherwise generally an appropriately gritty and Craigian motion picture. Along with the Haiti boat chase (which I found both extraneous and underwhelming), it's something I wish had been excised. Which leads me to what is quite possibly my number one gripe about QUANTUM:
I think it's too Long. Yep, you read that right. I know that it's The Shortest Bond Film Ever™, and the way that people have harped on about its running time it's as though Eon has given us a Mack Sennett short, but I actually found it overlong. I think it could have lost ooh, twenty minutes, say - most of those minutes action-filled. It just gets repetitive after a while, and the action (which is initially blinding) does get less impressive as the film goes on.
Still, there's always Mathis, a sort of father figure to our hero around whom some of QUANTUM's finest moments seem to converge, like flies around a golden turd. When he's onscreen, even Bond has some stiff competition in the coolness stakes, and his presence is responsible not only for some of the flick's most emotionally affecting bits (where you can almost sense Fleming smiling down on the filmmakers, albeit that this ain't exactly Fleming's vision of Mathis, but old Ian is, I trust, smiling down indulgently) but also for one of its funniest bits. At least, I think it's a funny bit - it may have been unintentional, and I may have read way too much into it, but I almost spat my popcorn Simon Pegg-style onto the back of the person in front of me when Bond goes up to the door of Mathis' villa and---- you'll love this, I promise, Bond knocks on the door
Spoiler
I nearly died. It was beautiful. If I've misinterpreted this bit, I just don't even want to know.Where are we up to? Oh, N. Well, having - I sincerely hope *surveys room with cold Craigian stare* - laid the bogey that this film has No humour, it's time, I think, to move on to the crushing inevitability that is the unloved season of the deeply fannish question of whether QUANTUM OF SOLACE measures up to such classics of Bondage as ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE.
"Too early to say, squire," is my reply, "although it's safe to say that it's one of the ten best Bond pictures ever. Probably. I don't think it's as perfect as CASINO ROYALE, by any stretch, for it does have its flaws. But when it's good, it's very, very good, and, frankly, that's all that I care about right now."
What would those flaws be, then? Well, the Plot, as others have noted, is Pants. But even Fellmmmming was responsible for more than a few plot holes, gaps in logic and assorted howlers, so I ain't that bothered. As QUANTUM's supporters (hi, ACE and Zorin, if you've made it this far) have stated, this is something of A Lean, Mean Novella of A Bond Film™ (although, as I say, I'd argue that it's actually rather too long, overburdened with unnecessary action). As I pontificated on another thread t'other day:
Fleming's much-maligned THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN is like a dub version of a Bond novel, with the occasional snippets of trad Bond that drop in and out of the mix being swamped by an emphasis on echo and reverb that floods the book with atmosphere. Critics have sneered at TMWTGG as a slight piece of work, a novella lacking substance, but it's all about the bass and riddim, making it arguably the most vibrant of Bond books, Fleming as a dancehall selector conjuring a sensual shadowplay of silhouettes through the sweat and ganja smoke. It's a novel to be felt, not read, and is, in its way, one of the greatest treasures of the Bond universe - certainly one of the most surprising.
I feel kinda the same way about QUANTUM. Y'know.
But, yeah, I have my QUANTUM OF QUIBBLES. The climax, featuring an assault by Bond and Camille (the latter here filling Jinx's shoes somewhat tiresomely as a Buttkicking Babe™) on a desert hotel so chic and minimalist that it doesn't appear to have any guests, or staff, or.... anything: this climax is MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE IIish, groaning with ripe dialogue that, as in other scenes, really ought to have been looked at again by the filmmakers. Too often do characters come out with lines like "But what will the CIA do when they find out they've been burned?", lines that just seem hammy and cliché-ridden and, well, wrong. Which is a pity, since there's so much about QUANTUM that's absolutely dead-on
Right.
The Stuff at the opera house, for instance. Amazing. I thought it was going to be like the part in FACE/OFF where "Over the Rainbow" plays incongruously over a shootout, but it's, erm, not. It is really cool, though, and a real treat for the eyes.
TOSCA aside, there ain't much musical awesomeness in QUANTUM. Arnold's okay but little more ("No Interest in Dominic Greene", which you'll find on the soundtrack CD, has a wonderfully YOLTish Barry flavour, though), and I can't quite decide where I stand on "Another Way to Die". It's awful, it truly, truly is, but at the same time it's got a screamingly camp quality and similarity to Lulu's "The Man With the Golden Gun" that I can but enjoy.
Until I saw it, I didn't know what to think about the opening credits animation. Obviously. But, actually, I still don't. I admire it, perhaps more than I actually like it, possibly because, like many other things about QUANTUM, it's so obviously a case of GETTING BOND WRONG!!!!!!!! that's it just deliciously right. It seems much more appropriate to a '70s sci-fi flick from MGM like LOGAN'S RUN or WESTWORLD. But, hey, that's cool. And, besides, the PTS is so flat-out incredible that the animation could have been replaced by clips from LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE and still I'd have been geeking out.
It's a Very vibrant film in places, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, and it's this vibrancy, this visual verve, that carries it through its lumpy bits and confusing (okay, call me thick if you like, I don't care, sticks and stones....) passages, along with Craig's magnificent performance. He's ably supported by Giancarlo G, Olga K (kah, these foreigners with their difficult surnames!), Mat A and even (and this surprised me, given the stick she's gotten) Gemma Arterton. The guy who plays Medrano, Joaquim Phoenix or whoever - this cat is creepy. Brrrrrrrr. Vicious little so-and-so.
Dench ain't too shabby, either, although, c'mon, I did eventually start feeling that she's so ridiculously omnipresent, seemingly anticipating 007's every Bournian lightning-speed switch of location, that she must be a telepathic teleporter. And, I'm sorry, but look, the final scene. In a shabby apartment. In Moscow. If it isn't Bourne then I, my friends, am Daniel Craig. Given Forster's penchant for a striking font, Would. It. Have. Killed. Him. to set this final encounter in, say, Shanghai or Seoul or Tokyo (giving him a few lovely Chinese ideograms to play with), or, I dunno, Bombay or somewhere else where A. Bond's never been (or not been recently), B. (and more to the point) Bourne's not just visited yesterday, and C. they write in eyecatching scripts?
At the very least, you wouldn't get Wankers on the internet complaining: "but it's copied from the final scene of The Bourne Supremacy, Eon have lost the art of makign Bond films they're just ripping of Jason BoiurneandFlemmmmmmmming would be rolling his grave!".
X
Yeah, I really enjoyed QUANTUM OF SOLACE, by and large. Since Zorin doesn't reckon films ought to be given ratings out of 10, I'm delighted to give it a very respectable 8. But I ain't gonna say out of what.
And, oh, yeah,
BOND IS BACK!
