Bottom line: The new Bond falls far short of the last one, though star Daniel Craig is still riveting.
Grade (on a 1-10 scale): 6
It’s fitting that my first online film review for Metro concerns the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, because the movies’ master spy was among my first cinematic obsessions. I was 12 years old when I encountered From Russia With Love (1963), the second 007 outing, but I became an instant convert. Goldfinger, the next Bond film, sealed the deal, combining action, eros and wry British drollery in virtually the same moment that brought us the pop panache of the Beatles and Swinging London.
Flash forward more than four decades. The Bond cycle has grown bloated and hoary. But then comes the most unlikely and galvanic of resurrections. The family of longtime producer Albert R. Broccoli rethinks the brand and retools it from the ground up. The result, in Casino Royale, is stunningly smart and successful. The script hews more closely to Ian Fleming’s gritty fiction than any Bond film has in ages. The direction, by journeyman veteran Martin Campbell, welds breathtaking action to a new concern with character and mood. A welcome measure of visceral realism and emotional force replaces the former emphasis on giddy, hi-tech fantasy, while many of the old Bond stand-bys (martinis, gambling, cars, exotic locales
) are persuasively updated.Best of all, the new agent 007, feral and muscular Daniel Craig, is the most persuasive and charismatic Bond since Sean Connery’s original, a tough customer who’s as believable is brutal smackdowns as he is in a tux at the casino’s gaming tables.
I wish I could report that Quantum of Solace equaled or came close to its predecessor’s strengths, but it doesn’t. Expansive and energetic, it’s by no means a washout, or a return to the fanciful, fantastical Bonds of yore. The producers, thankfully, continue many of the changes made in the last film. Indeed, a curious facet is that this is the first 007 movie that’s premised as a sequel to the one that came before it. Our Bond this time is still reeling from the terrific personal loss he suffered at the end of Casino Royale. Unfortunately, if you missed that film or don’t recall its specifics, you may find the references to Vesper Lynn (Bond’s tragic love) just plain baffling.
There are several problems with the new film, most bespeaking a failure to build on the lessons of the previous movie. First, rather than returning to Fleming’s fiction (though the film’s title comes from one of his short stories), the screenplay comprises a mishmash of action-movie clichés and topical references. Much of it, alas, is murky and clotted to the point of incomprehensibility. The scene shifts from Italy to England to Haiti to South America to Austria and so on, but the plotting grows more opaque at every turn. If you come out of the movie knowing who the main baddies were working for, you’re a more astute observer than I. (Speaking of baddies, the chief one here, played by goofy French actor Mathieu Amalric, may be the weakest Bond villain ever.)
The film’s second big weakness is director Marc Forster, a craftsman known for art films (Monsters’ Ball, The Kite Runner) who’s demonstrably inferior to Campbell at the combination of visual brio and emotional nuance that made Casino Royale such a stunner. Granted, Forster mounts a full complement of action set pieces that, since they arrive like clockwork every ten minutes or so, keep the movie rattling along at a good clip and assure that most viewers won’t fall asleep (and may even feel like they’ve gotten their money’s worth). But these scenes have a mechanical, by-the-Jason-Bourne-playbook feel, and they don’t substitute for the dramatic and emotional textures that distinguished the last Bond.
As our favorite maverick superspy, Daniel Craig remains compelling and constantly watchable, the best single addition to the franchise in ages. But this film’s script fails him. In Casino Royale, Craig rode an emotional rollercoaster that brought out his tremendous gifts as an actor and thereby expanded and enriched Bond as a character. Here, he’s just put through the paces as an action hero, and we learn nothing more about the man. Given the lukewarm to chilly reviews the film seems headed for, let’s hope its producers find Craig a better script and director next time out.
