Review upon a second viewing

Rating: 8/10 (29 December 2011)

I have just watched Quantum of Solace again, and I don't really understand why it's such a maligned Bond film. In all honesty, I find it very hard to re-watch the old bonds now, even the revered Goldeneye. QOS is criticised for not having much of the wholly debonaire Bond so iconic of past films, yet the much lauded Casino Royale lacked that interpretation of Bond as well.
Essentially, the Bond films of the past got caught up in the sexual revolution of the 60s and thus reflect that attitude, however that's hardly relevant nowadays when scenes in television dramas are enough to make those old films blush. The sexuality of the old bonds is rather quaint when viewed with today's far more sexually subjective lens. If such an approach were to be kept, perhaps only granting the agent his first bisexual experience could keep it in any way punchy.
This rebooting of Bond has been long overdue, and the aspects which I've enjoyed most about it is the closeness with the colder, more ruthless Bond of the earlier novels, while still maintaining some level of sexuality and the debonaire. The character's emotional development -- at first cocky and naive in Casino, and then injured and broken (after Vesper's betrayal and death) in Quantum -- is far more rewarding emotionally than yet another formulaic rerun of the tired Bond archetype.
Yet the criticism is that this somehow diminishes his character, makes him like 'James Bourne'. It really is quite silly. What diminishes any character is having him constantly repeat himself such that he becomes his own caricature. Craig's Bond has me excited as to what he'll do next. Bond has become a far more complex and intriguing person to get to know. I don't miss the gadgets, nor the suave dismissal of danger which only somebody mentally deficient could perform.
Other than that, the charges levied against the film, such as a clichéd and scant story, as well as an over-dependence on action scenes, are amusingly hypocritical. The same critics decry the loss of the older, outdated Bond yet hold this film to standards very few of those old Bond films could ever hope to meet. Bond is anything if not clichéd, but isn't that part of the charm, and it's one of the old traditions which have survived.
The other reason for the film's failure to gel with critics, at least in my view, is the premise. The villain is nebulous and vague. We know that whoever Bond chases, he or she will no doubt be nothing more than a pawn, or at least one of many heads of a global hydra. This lacks the personal punch of a Le Chiffre, yet for the attentive viewer, the new villains and their organisation have intriguing intersections.
The other issue was the plot, and by this I mean that of the villain, who is concerned with not only installing, propping up and profiting off dictatorships of developing countries, but also stealing the water rights from them as well. We in the developed world can't imagine what paying for every drop of water is like, not like in those developing countries in which people are jailed for collecting rainwater.
In the the Middle East, fossil water supplies have all but depleted, and they don't replenish. The brief years of prosperous farming are now over. New economies collapse and corporate rescuers step in, like Monsanto with their genetically modified, 'terminator seeds' which require chemical activation or they're infertile past their 'licensed season'. Thus developing nations become forever shackled transnationals' profit. Imagine if the water supply was controlled by them as well.
So yes, the culprits aren't dictators or dastardly SMERSH agents. They are transnational corporations, completely amoral in their decisions, who see owning a whole nation's water as a great investment. I think that movie goers just failed to key into the grand scale of villainy which Bond was up against. That and, Quantum of Solace is quite an impenetrable title for many Joe Blo movie goers -- a common complaint -- yet the title is simple, that Bond is searching for that one 'quantum of solace' which will enable him to overcome his grief and anger and function as a human being and a man.
I think that, facing all we have to face in this new, corporate and amoral world, a quantum of solace is what everybody needs.