"Quantum Of Solace" Film Review

Bug's Take:

It’s official. Daniel Craig IS the new James Bond. There was enough evidence in his first showing in Casino Royale and after watching Quantum of Solace, I saw there was more proof he’s the number one reason these films work and should bode well in the box office. The action, the dialogue, the acting, the plotline – all crucial to any great film and the cherry on top of the Bond Sundae is the addition of Craig as the debonair leading man.

Let’s start in order: the action. It’s all there and it’s all there from the get go. Don’t settle in your seat too well and stop slurping your soda because you might accidentally swallow your straw. Think of the action as bookends that appear at the beginning and end and are hard pressed to hold everything in between. Bond can do it all. Ride a scooter, steer a crappy boat around faster nicer ones, drive an Aston Martin through the streets of any country and still look stunning. I love that the writers of these new Bond movies aren’t afraid to beat up their hero in addition to kicking the crap out of bad guys. It creates a very exciting movie.

Next up: the dialogue. I imagine it’s a tough job to write a Bond film for it needs to contain all the elements of an action film without losing the edge of crisp, believable “spy speak”. The writers have to maintain Bond’s suave talk with the ladies but also include a harsh disdain for his enemies without cheesing it up (like those bad puns at the beginning of every CBS drama shows). Don’t fret; there isn’t any of that in Quantum. As a wannabe writer, I absolutely love (and dwell) on fresh, fun, and believable characters who sound like (surprise) their characters! Although the action and special effects make for great visual stimulation, you’ll find yourself liking films more that have excellent writing for it keeps the movie running along smoothly.

Okay, now another element: the acting. Throw in a beautiful lady who can hold her own with the fine Bond chops of Daniel Craig, mix in a veteran creeperton villain, and add a few large doses of Dame Judi Dench and your producer and director can breathe easy while doing their jobs because they know the people on the other side of the camera can more than do theirs. Craig has a thing about him, like he doesn’t have to try that hard to be Bond, but I’m sure he is. That’s the beauty of it though; he appears to fall into the role without much effort and in doing so, creates his own Bond apart from all the previous ones. He’s tougher, he’s in better shape, and he’s rugged and raw like any new promoted spy should be. And Dench, well, she’s Dench. I don’t have to tell anyone – Brit or American – that she’s awesome in all that she does.

Finally, the last part: the plotline. Do not underestimate the design of a good plotline. If you have everything else – the actors, the action, the dialogue – it doesn’t make a good movie if you have Bond chasing after a flock of killer robot ducks who drop egg bombs over the valleys of England. I have to admit I didn’t follow the story right away because there were a few tangents going on, but they eventually fall in place and you find yourself in your seat exhaling. It makes sense. With economies failing all over the world, it makes sense there are those who are trying to make money on the naiveté of smaller countries. Pay attention, there’s little things you need to catch to make sense of the overall storyline.

Bottom line? If you miss something in this movie, don’t worry . . . you’re going to want to watch it again. But you have to see it once at least.

B's Take:

I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never been that big of a James Bond fan. I remember watching a few of the films when I was a little kid (during the Roger Moore era), mostly because my dad thought he was cool. I always got the impression he was TOO cool, if that’s possible, so I never got too deep into the character of James Bond.

Of course, when I hit puberty, James Bond took on a whole new level of coolness to me solely based on the women he got to hang around with and, presumably, do naughty things with. But even then I didn’t watch the movies for Bond, I watched because there were all kinds of “sort of” naked girls in the opening credits and peppered throughout the movie. This was well before I was old enough to get my own Playboy subscription.

So now that I have seen my share of beautiful naked women both in magazines and in person (thanks TD’s Strip Club, but can I have my money back though?), James Bond has to do a whole lot more than be cool and show pseudo-naked women to get me involved.

This one did.

I don’t know what the title means, honestly. I could warrant a guess that would probably be at least in the ballpark of correct, but I couldn’t say for sure without Googling it. I didn’t see the movie before this one with the “new” James Bond (Casino Royale starring Daniel Craig), because all the buzz around that movie had to do with how good he looked in his little Speedo shorts on the beach. Since I don’t swing that way, a movie has to show me a lot more than a dude gallivanting around in a banana-sling to get me to go see it.

The real reason I saw this movie was because my other choice was “Madagascar 2.” I did what any rational human male without kids would do and I opted for the boobs and the violence and I took the calculated risk that the male swimsuit model shots would have all played out in the first movie. Luckily I was right about that and I got to see a pretty good film because of it.

The first thing that struck me about the movie was that whoever set up the locations must have one of the coolest jobs in the world. And the Director of Photography must have had a field day with his job. I can honestly say that every single static shot in the movie is visually stunning, and the vast majority of the moving shots are equally so. It would normally be a bad thing to be paying attention to the background instead of the actors in an action movie, but in this one it just made the whole 007 aura seem more vibrant than usual.

From the very opening shot of the movie you are taken on a colorful, visually stimulating, exciting joyride. You are able to throw some of your beliefs of reality out the window because, hey, this is James Bond we’re talking about. One of the best things about the movie is that the “how the hell is that possible” moments are very few and far between. The director (Marc Forster of “Finding Neverland” fame) and writers have done a phenomenal job of taking the cartoon version of James Bond (played impressively by Daniel Craig) and throwing him out the window, instead replacing him with a James Bond that is more like Jason Bourne than Superman.

There are still the required scenes of Bond in a tuxedo, and Bond does get the women and all the cool cars (along with some not-so-cool cars). The best thing about the movie to me, besides the locations and photography, was the fact that James Bond was portrayed as a human. He has flaws. He gets his ass kicked. He shows an amount of rage that I’ve never seen before in a Bond film, yet it is rage underneath a very cool façade. It becomes fun to watch after a while.

There were a few missteps in the movie, most notably Olga Kurylenko in a curious bit of casting that puts an inordinate amount of spray-tan on a Ukrainian model so she can play a Latin American hottie with one very beautiful but vapid facial expression. And a small, but glaring, annoyance in that the car selection pretty much played out like an action-packed Ford product commercial thanks to that Aston-Martin, Land Rover, Ford Ka driven by Kurylenko and, unfortunately, the Ford Edge he drove in the latter part of the film (Really? James Bond in a mid-range SUV? Really?).

But the bottom line is this movie was a fun movie to watch. It stands on its own as long as you go into the movie knowing that his girlfriend got killed at the end of Casino Royale. You may feel a little lost during some of the scenes, but most of it will make sense in the end, and you will have a good time while you are heading to the end of the movie.

I would definitely recommend seeing this one in the theater because it's a good film and the added bonus of getting to see all of the locations on the big screen.

B!