Quantum of Solace - WTF!

Rating: 4/10 (31 December 2009)

Quantum of Solace was obviously made for Bolivians only, because they are the only ones who are going to care about its plot - which involves a villain Dominic Greene trying to corner 60% of Bolivia's water supply so he can force the new Bolivian government to pay top dollar for it. Dull right? Yeah, absolutely right. But that's not the only problem with Quantum of Solace. Mark Foster and the producers got the main villain Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) all wrong. The best kind of villain for a Bond movie is very eccentric (if not insane), has a sinister looking face, could be a bit of a nerd, has a black sense of humour, does incredibly evil things that you would not expect (like dump a woman in a river of piranhas), and usually has a great master plan which he is just aching to reveal to the hero James Bond. And usually the makers of James Bond get this villain down to a tea: take Dr. No in "Dr. No," Blofeld in "You Only Live Twice" and "For Your Majesty's Secret Service," or Francisco Scaramunga in "The Man with the Golden Gun," or Renaud in "The World is not Enough" and so on. But Mathieu Amalric as Dominic Greene is just too dull, too nice and too prissy to come across as even remotely evil. As for the other bad guys, they are an embarrassment to evil people everywhere. I personally think Osama bin Laden, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Pervez Musharraf, Islam Karimov, Omar Bashir and Robert Mugabe should file a law suit against the producers who made this film for making them look bad by putting them in the same category as Dominic Greene.
The other problem with this movie is that it is really only about chase scenes. Car chases, running, motorcycle chases, plane chases, more running... a bit monotonous and tiresome, don't you think? This movie has more chases than "Live and Let Die" and "the Man with the Golden Gun" put together and that's an achievement. But not an achievement to be proud of, because there is no room for, let's say, a much better plot, great Bond dialogue, sexy scenes with centre-fold women (in fact, the only scenes I enjoyed in this entire Bond film involved James Bond (Daniel Craig) and the sexy red head Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton), though I am not quite sure when they started finding each other attractive), and interactions between the villain and Bond.
Finally, I think the director got James Bond wrong. Daniel Craig's personality is so icy that his charisma evaporates; he makes Roger Moore look like Alfie. I realize that this was how Daniel Craig is supposed to play Bond and he does it very well. But at the same time, an openly cold and unsympathetic personality does not work in the context of a fun Bond film (Casino Royale was different, because it works as a serious Bond film). James Bond always had a shadow over him, but he also knew how to tuck it away when he was seducing women. We do not see that kind of Bond here and I think that is a mistake.