do men still want to be *this* 007?

Rating: 5/10 (20 November 2008)

One of the longest standing traditions- or if not that at least pleasant clichÃ©s- of the 007 franchise has been that James Bond, more or less depending on the actor, is someone women want and men want to be. With the James Bond of the new Daniel Craig variety, women still probably want him (of all people my own mother can't get enough of the "getting-out-of-the-ocean" shot from Casino Royale), but now more than ever with Quantum of Solace I'm not sure what men will want to trade hats with this one. This is the coldest and most ruthless of all of the James Bond portrayals, both in Craig's efficient performance (in his own way he's as interesting an actor as Connery if on the opposite end of the spectrum) and in the treatment in the "serious" action-movie tone, and while Bond has always killed first and asked questions later this time one feels no guilty-pleasure fun in Bond's fights and deathly encounters.
Matter of fact, even more-so than Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace feels more like a slick and (sometimes) precisely oiled action-movie machine and less like the "fun" days of Bond from his early years. This is a conscious decision to try new things, which is fine, but there's a sort of disassociation I felt to the film from time to time, that without so much as a shred of any real fun to the piece (and do try to distinguish between fun and camp, it's the difference between many Bond adventures) it goes on and on with its one-time-only sequel structure to Casino Royale holding only so much water. The kicker is that after so much time spent in a "realistic" Bond world, which is a little like a cousin of the Bourne series at this point (I'm not the first to point to this but it's an obvious point worth making), the climax comes around to what appears to be a standard Bond-type over-the-top setting: a hotel in the middle of the desert built, perhaps, for the simple reason of burning it to the ground by the end. Uh-huh.
But all of this gripping doesn't mean the picture doesn't have some entertainment value or things worthwhile about it. As said, Craig is a solid 'serious' Bond just as Christian Bale is a solid 'serious' Bruce Wayne/Batman. I also loved seeing French character actor Mathieu Amalric (Munich, Diving Bell & Butterfly) playing the villain Dominic Greene; he's built perfectly to play any villain, and in this instance her fits in wonderfully. It's only a shame he takes up more screen time than mostly wooden Olga Kurylenko.
And yet for all of the mild joys of watching any Bond picture, the direction of the picture does start to wear down on a viewer not ready for its Eisenstein-on-crack editing values. Marc Forster, for all of his talents in directing an interesting cast (Giancarlo Giannini and Jeffrey Wright also have small parts), is terrible with most of the action scenes. So much of it whizzes by, cranked to 11 with its cuts creating the effect of whiplash. Some may find this perfectly intense, which is fine. Personally, I pined for some of the more 'static' action sequences of old-school Bond - even Campbell's Casino Royale, which handled another similar level of intensity far more effectively.
So, 007 will continue on with its latest and bravest of the Bonds, and the plots will continue to get further crazier and possibly even colder and cranked past 11. All well and good. Just don't expect anything too amazing.