In 2006’s reboot of the 007 franchise, “Casino Royale,” James Bond (Daniel Craig) dealt with the cold detachment from human contact that came with the job . In the sequel “Quantum of Solace,” Bond now has to deal with his trauma using a bit of anger management –– and by that, I mean shooting people and blowing everything up.
The stony and impersonal 007 isn’t necessarily new for the series, but in this film, Bond is so consumed by vengeance toward Quantum, the criminal organization that blackmailed Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) into working for them, that his Hulk-like tendencies tend to get the best of him. It seems now that Bond has a little case of the butterfingers, “accidentally” killing henchmen who need to be brought in for MI6 questioning. “Casino” was certainly a dark affair, but director Marc Forster (“The Kite Runner,” “Stranger Than Fiction”) and company push the boundaries in “Quantum” so much that I had to wonder how this managed to slip by with a PG-13 rating.
As the first official sequel in the series, “Quantum” picks up directly after the ending of “Casino,” with Bond taking Mr. White (Jesper Christiansen) for a ride in the trunk of his Aston Martin while a slew of henchmen pursue them from behind. White is taken in for interrogation by M (Judi Dench) and subsequently escapes from captivity, leading Bond on the hunt once again as he travels: La Paz! Port-au-Prince! Bregenz!: the world. Along the way, Bond butts heads with Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a snake-oil salesman under the guise of a do-gooder corporate environmentalist. In keeping with the series revamped focus to be as Bourne-like as possible, Greene’s nefarious plan is more in line with Bush than it is with Blofeld: He plans on staging a coup in order to gain control of Bolivia’s water supply.
It’s a tangled web of plotlines, and the problem is that screenwriters Paul Haggis, Neil Purvis and Robert Wade aren’t able to flesh them out within the film’s 105 minute runtime (making this the shortest Bond flick yet). The film feels more like an extended edition of “Casino Royale” than it does a sequel. Quantum’s role is never fully explained outside of the fact that they’re a group of powerful people who meddle with government affairs in the shadows. There’s a small, small part about Bond going rogue that never feels convincing. And while Olga Kurylenko’s Camille, a Russian-Bolivian femme fatale with a few scars of her own, is a great analog for Bond’s feelings of revenge, she doesn’t leave an impression by the film’s end.
“Quantum” definitely feels like it’s been edited down so that there’s more time to get to the whiz-bang spectacle of the action sequences.
Speaking of those sequences: They’re beautifully shot, but I’m not so sure that Forster is confident with directing action.
Some of them: like a dogfight over the South American desert: are beautifully realized, while others tend to suffer the wrath of the shaky-cam (note to filmmakers everywhere: only Paul Greengrass can do this effectively, so stop trying to copy him).
But you know what? “Quantum of Solace” still holds its own despite being inferior to “Casino Royale,” and it’s mostly due to Daniel Craig’s interpretation of Bond. The pain of losing Vesper quietly takes its toll on him, shown when Bond snatches a photo of her from a dossier when M briefly looks away. He can’t break down, and so he soldiers on.
Aside from bringing to the series a cold physicality, Craig as Bond is able to give the simplistic elements of 007 a little more meat.
Exploring the psychology of anti-heroes isn’t new – this year, it was “The Dark Knight” – but it’s a testament to Craig’s acting skill when he can shift from grizzled cold-blooded killer to dry-witted ladies’ man without telegraphing it.
It’s a lean film that’s more about Bond’s personal quest to reconnect with someone lost (and himself) than it is to uncover global conspiracies.
