Bond #22: Going to Bolivia

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 2016)

James Bond (Daniel Craig) chases the CEO of a dubious company, Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) who talks a lot about ecology and gives to charity, but has all kinds of dirty business going on. In Bolivia, he supports a general to become president in exchange for control over the country's water supply. The same general killed the family of Camille (Olga Kurylenko) years ago, and when Bond teams up with Camille because there isn't anyone else – M and the British secret service stop their support, while the Americans even are on his enemy's side – his job becomes entwined with her personal revenge. Whether Bond is also motivated by personal motives, dating back to the predecessor 'Casino Royale', remains unclear, at least he denies it when M asks him.
In my view, 'Quantum of Solace' is one of the poorest contributions to the series. The action of the movie is uninspired: a car chase, a boat chase, then a plane is shot down, and if you finally compare the boxy desert hotel to the amazing ice hotel in 'Die Another Day', you wonder where all the money went. The cast is not convincing, either: Mathieu Amalric is an easily forgettable villain, just a business guy in a white shirt, while Ukrainian Olga Kurylenko plays the Bolivian girl as if she was preparing for the role by staying a week on the sun bed and then put a silly wig on. It remains a mystery why the casting director didn't attempt to find a talented Latin American actress for the part? To add insult to injury, we get Beam, a CIA agent with a fake mustache who looks like a cartoon character (but is intended to be dead serious). Every scene he is in made me cringe in my seat. The title song is one of the rare cases that a Bond main theme is not memorable. Despite this long list of disappointments, the movie isn't entirely bad. 'Quantum of Solace' is well edited and photographed, deliberately less glossy than others of the series. The grainy look fits the desert location, for example. And Craig plays a good Bond, silent, tough and mean, with less lines than ever before which is an advantage.