QUANTUM OF SOLACE (Marc Forster, 2008) **1/2

Rating: 6/10 (19 November 2008)

Daniel Craig has had to face almost as tough an opposition as James Bond does in his movies when he took on the role of everybody's favorite British secret agent two years ago but CASINO ROYALE (2006) had effectively silenced his critics by being, for my money, one of the all-time Top 5 entries in the long-running series. However, I can see an onslaught of bad vibes creeping up again following his second stab at the role. Actually, he's not really the one to blame as his is a good performance under the circumstances; clearly, the major culprits here are the screenwriters and director for not really understanding (or caring enough) who James Bond is – and has been for practically the last half-a-century – and the producers (who should have known better) for letting them tamper with the beloved character far too much.
Before I sat down to watch this, I skimmed through online film forums to gauge the general reaction to the new Bond outing and, being a largely negative one, I prepared myself for the worst. While the film didn't prove to be as bad as all that, it's still inferior to its direct predecessor to such a dispiriting extent that the production team decidedly need to go back to the drawing-board fast if the next installment is to keep the momentum brought on by the breath of fresh air that CASINO ROYALE had been. It's well-known by now that, uncharacteristically for the series, QUANTUM OF SOLACE is a continuation of that film's storyline in that Bond is more interested in rooting out the man responsible for the death of his precious Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) – despite his all-too evident bitterness (read emotionless brutality) at her betrayal of him – than he is in catching the bad guys in this one.
And, frankly, who can blame him when he's saddled with a potentially impotent wimp of a villain (Mathieu Almaric) – with an even more effete right-hand man – whose nefarious crimes extend merely to controlling the water supply of Bolivia to the detriment of the perpetually poor populace? Besides, Vesper Lynd had conclusively proved not to be just another Bond girl in more ways than one – being a woman whose death Bond was still mourning and a memorable character in her own right. Despite the beauty of her substitute here (which still comes up short, if you ask me, next to the stunning Miss Green), the character of Camille (Olga Kurylenko) is so one-dimensional that Bond doesn't even entertain the notion of making love to her (a first for a Bond film for sure) and the one episode where he does go to bed with a girl – a red-headed M16 desk clerk (Gemma Arterton) that goes by the name of Strawberry Fields ('tis pity she didn't wear flowers in her hair, though) – seems like an afterthought merely intended to make her death scene a welcome tribute to Shirley Eaton's iconic fate in GOLDFINGER (1964)!
After the extended, breathlessly-paced opening action sequence, I wasn't too bothered by the rapid cutting which is said to imitate the BOURNE trilogy (but I wouldn't really know since I'm not familiar with it and have little interest in finding out) but, apart from a good sequence at the Opera House, even the action set-pieces seemed indifferent to me. Equally pointless were the cameo appearances of both Giancarlo Giannini and Jeffrey Wright from CASINO ROYALE but the low-point of the movie must surely be the fact that the villain – lame though he might be – gets his come-uppance off-screen (which must be another first for this series)! The obligatory title song (performed by Jack White and Alicia Keys) has also received a lot of flak but, again, I didn't find it as painful to listen to as others seem to have. Significantly, however, while QUANTUM OF SOLACE is, at 106 minutes, officially the shortest-running Bond movie ever (which is all the more remarkable because it follows the longest entry of all), it feels much longer than that – which is never a positive sign. One final thing: I still don't quite know what to make of the film-makers' decision to go back in time with Bond – making him a still up-and-coming secret agent that has yet to earn M's complete trust – and yet have him operate in this advanced technological age of ours (represented by mobile phones and touch-screen graphics).