‘007 goes rogue’ is how they billed it. The last time they did that – License to Kill – was one of the series’ low points, portraying a cold, heartless character, and a story that lacked many of the franchise’s cornerstone features.
Well, Quantum of Solace doesn’t do that, but the three star ratings it garnered in most of the press reviews weren’t far off the mark. There’s still no Q, and there are no gadgets beyond an impressive array of Sony phones that run software years ahead of their time. There’s no Moneypenny and the villain – a fay environmentalist called Dominic Greene – has all the menace of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. His sidekick is more Bob-a-Job than Odd-Job.
There are some genuine edge-of-seat highs, like a prop-driven aerial dogfight and the much-hyped car chase, which really is brutal, exciting and loud. But in trying to emulate the Bourne films by putting you right in the middle of a fight or the Aston Martin’s driving seat it becomes confused and hard to follow. Bourne simply – sadly – did it better. Perhaps because it did it first and now we’re always comparing.
Never is the more evident than those times when director Forster stops trying to copy the competition and goes his own way, producing something so grand and impressive as Bregenzer Festspiele opera house scenes and the graceful gunfight that ties them off.
If the crew had been brave enough to do this throughout and create something entirely their own it would have been a stand-out entry in the franchise. In parts, though, it feels like a best-of. MI6 has dumped Windows and switched to whatever operating system they used in Minority Report, Agent Fields gets the Goldfinger treatment, although this time with oil, not gold paint. The eco hotel in which the climactic battle takes place looks for all the world like Ken Adam’s Fort Knox (Goldfinger) or the power station (green energy again) in The Man with the Golden Gun. And Quantum itself is the modern day Spectre.
That this is a more intelligent Bond isn’t in doubt, and it has once again stripped away the clutter of the Brosnan era to produce something more in tune with the rough, stark, more authentic From Russia With Love.
I left the cinema feeling a little disappointed, but suspecting that this would be a film that repayed rewatching. Two days later, I’m convinced that’s true, and already looking forward to the DVD.
And also to the third part of what is looking increasingly like a trilogy. We still don’t know what Bond found out from Vesper’s boyfriend, what Canadian intelligence has to do with all of this, or who heads up Quantum (or quite what it is). There is clearly a new Blofeld on the scene, and it wasn’t eco-warrior Dominic Greene.
Quantum of Solace: 
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Tags: 007, films, james bond, movies
[...] Quantum of Solace picked up an hour on from the end of Casino Royale, and followed Bond on his quest to track down the Quantum organisation, which was ultimately behind Vesper’s death (through revenge of duty? Who knows – it could be a little of both). In the closing scenes he confronts Vesper’s betrayer in a Moscow flat, but apart from leaving him more or less alive we know nothing of what happened between them or the content of their discussion. [...]