Interesting Bond Flick With Some Good Bits But Lacklustre Direction

Rating: 5/10 (15 April 2011)

British spy James Bond is investigating Quantum, a secret society with a shady agenda led by environmental philanthropist Dominic Greene. He uncovers a CIA-approved plot to control the water supply in Bolivia, but his reckless actions threaten to spark an international incident.
The second Bond film for Craig is perhaps a little better than its predecessor (the boring Casino Royale), but not by much in my opinion. The previous movie was too long and didn't have enough action but this one has plenty of thrills (an opening car chase, a rooftop fight, a speedboat chase, an aerial dogfight, a fiery finale) and is much shorter than all the previous Bond flicks, so no complaints there. It also has the usual great locations and some fabulous opulent sets by one of my favourite art directors, Dennis Gassner (Miller's Crossing, Big Fish), so it looks terrific. But I'm afraid I have some hefty problems, chiefly the choice of Forster as director. He's good with drama (Finding Neverland, The Kite Runner) but I'm not so sure of his action credentials - he makes the classic MTV-generation mistake of assuming that if he just cuts the action scenes together very fast that will somehow make them very exciting. Wrong; take the rooftop chase scene, which has some amazing stuntwork as Bond and the henchman fall through a skylight into an atrium and dangle precariously from ropes and scaffold. Can anybody actually follow what's happening in this sequence without watching it at about quarter-speed ? I certainly can't - we get no setups to familiarise ourselves with the place, we have almost no sense of where the actors are in relation to each other at any given time and we get at most a second to make sense of each shot before we're on to the next. This is poor, lazy filmmaking from a director who either isn't thinking from the audience's point of view or just hasn't prepared properly. My other bugbear is that there are several key plot points and character arcs which are a continuation of the Casino Royale plot - another mistake. Bond films should be episodic, dumping whatever happened in the previous one completely in favour of a new adventure. Here, Giannini and Christensen reprise their roles directly, Wright also reappears (but is not really involved in the same plot) and Yusef, the agent in the epilogue, is referenced in the previous film but doesn't actually appear. What !? Who the hell wants to remember all that ? It's a James Bond movie ferchrissake ! Just gimme guns, gadgets and girls with big knockers - I don't want the story to be Middlemarch. Despite all this though there is quite a lot fun to be had here. Craig's Bad Boy Bond is undeniably cool, albeit prone to unnecessary occasional fits of remorse, Ukranian actress Kurylenko is a lot of fun and gets in on all the action, Amalric makes a good villain with his black eyes and white suits, although as with the previous baddie his evil scheme is pretty lacklustre (something to do with fixing Bolivian water rates), Dench is solid, but best I think is goofy Arterton as consulate envoy Strawberry Fields, whose name and fate are both good old-fashioned real James Bond stuff. Whilst it doesn't quite gel together, there are some really good scenes - the best I think is when Quantum are having a top-secret meeting by attending a performance of Tosca and talking via high-tech earphones. Bond steals one of the mikes, listens to all their plans, cheerfully breaks into their conversation and then photographs them all as they hurriedly get up to leave. This movie (and this franchise) needs more humour like this. All in all then, a mixed bag - good fun, but it doesn't cut the mustard for me as a Bond flick. Could we have John Woo in the director's chair next time please ?