Plot: Daniel Craig reprises his role as Ian Fleming's James Bond in Quantum of Solace, the 22nd feature in the 007 film franchise. Fueled by the betrayal of Vesper, the woman he loved, Bond's determination to track down the mastermind behind the sinister organization that blackmailed her takes him to Haiti, where he finds an unlikely ally in the beautiful and feisty Camille (Olga Kurylenko). The trail quickly leads to the ruthless Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), but with the British Government and the CIA working against him, Bond must kill or be killed on his mission to uncover the truth.
Firsts: Direct sequel of a previous Bond film, gunbarrel sequence appears at the end of the movie
Gadgets: None besides the fancy wall and table computers used in the MI6 offices
Girls Bond slept with: Agent Fields
Elaborate murder attempt that Bond escapes: There's plenty of attempts to kill him, but all are pretty straight-forward
Personal review: After all the hype, would you expect anything less than for me to have seen this at the midnight showing last night? So what's the verdict? Well, if I had to sum it up it's not a great Bond film, but a necessary one. There is plenty to enjoy here, for sure, but it is also a significant step down from the amazing Casino Royale. I have a feeling you'll be seeing me use the word 'but' a lot in this review because there are so many aspects of the film that left me divided.
Let's begin with a few Bond mainstays that I wanted to see in this film that were missing from Royale: 1) Q, 2) Moneypenny, 3) the traditional gunbarrel sequence. Well there was no Q or Moneypenny, but that was ok. The Bond producers have said they will return when it fits the story. And since this was a continuation of Royale, I perfectly understand why they aren't here, but I would like them back at some point. As for the gunbarrel sequence, yes it's here in its traditional form but they put it at the end of film. WHY?!? Director Marc Forster said he wanted it as a surprise, but I thought that was a dumb move. You're going to have traditional Bond fans, like myself, upset throughout the beginning of the film thinking that they got rid of it altogether. I'm glad it wasn't scrapped, but putting it at the end didn't make sense to me at all. Hopefully that gets changed next time out.
It appears from some of the stuff that I've read that Marc Forster was responsible for a lot of the changes that I did not care for in the film. I don't know if it was really him, but if it was, I hope he does not get asked back to direct another Bond film. Another example is with the credit sequence. Instead of sticking with Daniel Kleinman, who's done the past five Bond films, they go with a production crew that has worked with Forster on his previous films. I liked the concept that they went with in the credit sequence, but something just felt off about it.
The action sequences are another area of the film that I did not care for Forster's approach on. The actual action that was going on was very cool. Some excellent concepts in both hand-to-hand fights and vehicular chase sequences. However, Forster felt the need to shoot everything so close up and intimate that you lost a lot of the time, what was actually going on. He tried mimicking Paul Greengrass' style used in the Bourne flicks, but I just didn't care for it here. I know a lot of people cheered Royale for making the Bond franchise more like the Bourne films, but I don't want a carbon copy. Let Bourne be Bourne and Bond be Bond.
Of course, the one constant that remains solid here is Craig. I continue to love the approach he is taking with the character. I've read a lot of critics who feel the character is too angry and unapproachable, but I didn't get that. Sure, the film centers around his revenge mission, but I felt there to be plenty of glimpses of his lighter side and there were several moments throughout the film that garnered laughs from the crowd. So the whole criticism of the film being too somber doesn't fly with me.
I also really loved the locales that they chose for the film. I thought they once again did a great job of picking out events and locations that seemed new in a Bond films and added something to the action around them. I particularly loved the Tosca scenes, both for exhibiting the beautiful performance and for showcasing Bond being an awesome prick to the bad guys. However, I do wish they could have made the locales a bit more varying. The film had a consistent brown, black, white motif, which looked dirty and got monotonous. I also didn't care for the cutesy title cards indicating the new location. They seemed out of place and unnecessary, especially when they just said in the previous scene where they were going.
As for the rest of the cast, I enjoyed them but I thought they were all underutilized. Mathieu Amalric is decent, but doesn't get to truly exhibit pure evil. I also found it odd as to how hands-on he was in his evil plans considering how supposedly secret his organization was (a point stressed early on in the film). I also enjoyed both Bond girl and thought both were absolutely gorgeous. They also had some interesting characteristics about them, that weren't fully explored. I loved the Goldfinger homage involving Agent Fields though. But for Bond not to have slept with Camille at any point in the film just seemed wrong on many levels.
Finally, I thought the film really could have used to expanded its ending. There are two seperate scenes were Bond confronts a key villain, yet we do not get to see the conversations between them. Instead, we just see the aftermath. Given how much time we've spent over these two films on the betrayal of Vesper and the organization behind it, I really thought it was a ripoff not to see Bond interact with these characters more and let us hear the information that we want to know. The film is under two hours, a rariety for Bond films, so there was no reason why those scenes shouldn't have been included.
Overall, in a vaccuum, the film is a very entertaining action movie. For Bond fans, there is no doubt going to be some disappointment. As I said at the beginning, while this may not have been a great film, it was a necessary one. It has closed the chapter on Vesper and I think now they are ready to have Bond truly be Bond again. There have been some interviews already indicating this, so I'm anxious to see if they are good on their word. Definitely see this movie, just don't expect the same quality that you got with Casino Royale. 8.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment