Another Die Another Day

Rating: 3/10 (4 November 2008)

I suppose if I were looking for omens, the opening shot of QoS should have warned me - a sweeping overwater shot of Lake Como, not dissimilar to the start of Connery's much- maligned comeback picture Never Say Never Again and very much a visual cliché. But that's to tell a lie; the shot is wonderful and ominous and the way it cuts to a real bone-cruncher of a car chase that out Bonds Bourne all the way is excellent, I loved the glimpses you got of the town as it descends into a quarry, then steering past the cranes reminiscent of the car chase in Dr No, and watching one car smash sideways of the cliff, superb.
You'll need to sit further back if you want to enjoy it though, due to the frantic editing and close-ups, too fast for the eye to register.
It's after the credits the rot sets in with some WTF moments... I won't do spoilers, but within 20 minutes I'd seen enough oddities and incongruities, including a Bourne-style foot chase which was okay but including some odd 'let's paste it in later' CGI. Now the look of QoS is superb, the cinematography is lush and as lovely as that of Roger Moore's Moonraker nearly 30 years ago. However, it does have some bad similarities with Moonraker that are no good for Craig's Bond. 007 (though he never seems to be called that in the film) just seems to swan off to foreign climes on the flimsiest pretext all by himself; there's never any sense he has any back up from MI6; there don't seem to be any other 00 agents at all. It's a very egocentric film in that sense, and that may be the point, but Craig's Bond is much of a superhero as Moore, only substituting brawn for gadgets to get out of every situation.
At times, it reminded me of a mid-70s Pink Panther film, the way the plot moves from one scene to another. Oh! He's bumped into a lady by accident, who mistakes him for another.
Insipid Bond villain with a henchmen like Gareth out of The Office, dull, grumpy Bond girl, and M popping up every other scene ('It's Dame Judi - we have to make use of her!').
An excellent scene at the opera in Austria is a highlight, and very Hitchcockian.
But soon Quantum of Solace put me in mind of Never Say Never Again and Die Another Day, two that just don't feel like Bond movies to me. There's a plane sequence that really is a CGI fest right out of Pierce Brosnan's last film and totally out of keeping with the new down-to- earth Bond that Craig is meant to exemplify.
There's also a tragic death scene impaired by some truly vulgar and obvious product placement. Yes, Bond wears Omega. We get it!
I had reservations about director Marc Forster but really, his hiring is like getting Sebastian Faulk in for Devil May Care. Yes, he sets up every shot expertly and it looks lovely. But there's no experience of the genre and it shows. I began to realise that despite the change of personnel, it's the writers and producers who sink it every time for me. I can't say I was too disappointed with the film this time, I've been here so often before, as with Die Another Day.
Craig? He looks more like Fleming's Bond here. Yet even CR fans will admit that the best part of that film: the bankrupt Le Chiffre at cards thing, gaining the 00, the relationship with Vesper and her death, are all Fleming. Had that not been in the novel, the producers would never have had the nerve/imagination to do all that stuff for their reboot. Take those elements out and you get a series of action scenes in Madagascar, Miami Airport and Venice. Which is sort of QoS to a tee.
It's amazing how I can tune into Spooks every week, and it's great stuff that I can nitpick slightly I admit, but generally I get along with. The villains are great, you hate them, you root for the heroes who sometimes cross the line morally but never talk about torture in such a commonplace way as MI6 do here, plus some great touches; "Being happy isn't about getting what you want, it's about appreciating what you've got" last week. But the producers of Bond are bereft of any nouse at all. What is this film? A tribute to past Bond movies, to the franchise, a merchandising opportunity, a chance to be patriotic? A marketing exercise?
Sorry to be a downer, I really thought I would chalk this up as the best action film of the year even if not my thing as a Bond flick - better than TDK, easily Indy IV and possibly Iron Man. For me, Jack White and Alicia Keys should have called their song Another Die Another Day.