It isn't surprising that James Bond is in a rush. He's angry. His ostensibly faithful girlfriend Vesper Lynd drowns in teary martyrdom.
She leaves a card with information on "Mr. White" - the first of countless names in the malevolent "Quantum," an organization which doesn't quite enter into the light as we might expect. This may not bother some; again, this movie moves fast - there's no time to stand because Bond craves revenge, and we open in a blink to an Astin Martin careening along a hillside with villains in standard pursuit. This movie is not playing around.
The bullets hiss and sink, and the camera shifts to Daniel Craig's calm, chipped face, then back to the cars, the scene, the cars, back to Bond, henchmen pirouette screaming into water, and before we know it, 007 parks. The car might be torched but Craig is ready for what's next. He has the same dark resiliency that made this film's predecessor, Casino Royale, so effective. But one wonders as Bond smirks his opening line and the title sequence sends him walking breastcontoured Dunes to Jack White and Alicia Keyes: Does Quantum keep in step with the reboot, or is it old business as usual?
There's no denying the series' biggest facelift. Blonde-boy Daniel Craig upset some fans when he was first announced as the graying Pierce Brosnan's replacement, but he has come to fit the role well. Craig can flex the suave machismo in most situations - at dinner, at the card-table, with some anonymous thug plunging a knife shallowly into his back. In Quantum of Solace, there's the additional dimension: vengeance. Bond is displeased.
His lack of reluctance to dispatch anyone rather than leave them breathing goes double-time here. You'd be hard-pressed to argue he isn't mad. But is it grief, really? It's difficult to tell. He'll charge through some building knocking people off of railings, and then M (Judy Dench) will call to lecture him.
She'll tell him he's going too far. It's something he likes, and facially, Craig is the most expressive Bond yet; he fully understands his preference for destruction and what it means, but it was easy to forget the revenge element of his character when it wasn't directly addressed. Bond is Bond. He didn't seem to need a dead lover to spark him before. Still, it's part of the plot, and it's depth we never saw in the darkest Dalton days of the franchise.
In his tramplings Bond discovers a multifarious conspiracy focused on a political environmental scam masterminded by Dominic Greene (The French actor Mathieu Amalric). The plot implicates the public water supply and government of Bolivia and means to install one full-bellied cigar-smoking General Medrano through a coup d'etat. It's not very interesting and doesn't really bring the Quantum organization to any territory we haven't seen from Bond villains.
Dominic Greene is a rather normal (read: "realistic") looking French affluent whose intentions are clear but not threatening, until he swings an axe at 007 and chimp-howls. The plot can indeed be confusing, not because of a single detail but more by the film's unwillingness to furnish an adequate plot. Presumably, this Bolivian thing is small potatoes in the grand Quantum scheme. But since the film never reveals much about Quantum apart from its omnipresence, we have little else to work with.
The result is a sense that the film never gets going, which is odd, because, again, it seems to be hurtling mach three in large part. Bond covers three different countries in about 20 minutes. Things slow down for emotional scenes with the newest Bond girl, Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko). She's a looker. She has a turbulent past. She wants General Medrano dead because apparently he's in the habit of murdering families in person and leaving young girls to grow into their vendettas. Okay.
If you buy it, you buy it, and if you don't, watch the fires ramble on. This movie has no shortage of action or carnage or proof of its Cleopatraesque budget ($250 million, for the curious). It has few failing marks as an action movie. But are we talking about pre-Casino Bond or post? Isn't this the brooding man's Bond? There's an inner conflict at work here, and it's something future directors will have to figure out. The potential is there - Craig has the ability for emotional and explosive 007 range.
We're in a new set of movies now, and apparently Quantum of Solace is that odd middling child, one that at a gaunt 104 minutes, doesn't think it owes much more than a few gun fights, a couple loose plot mentions and grim stares. But this isn't the case. It's the second film in a continuity, rich with promise. Why lapse, James? And what's with that cocktail with six orange peels in it?
