Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace begins mere minutes after Casino Royale ends. Having got to Mr White, the shadowy figure in the background behind the now dead Le Chiffre, Bond is driving down the Italian roads with White in the car trunk. His journey would no doubt be easier were White’s bodyguards not trying to shoot him, but soon enough he gets rid of them in a nicely permanent way and White finds himself in a cell with Bond and M trying to get the truth out of him.

More unfortunately, M’s bodyguard turns out to be a traitor. Thanks to Bond he also turns out to be very, very dead, and in no fit state for interrogation. With White’s escape in the confusion, the trail has gone cold. Or almost cold; the bodyguard had bank notes that MI6 is able to trace back to one of Le Chiffre’s bank accounts. With this slender lead Bond goes to Haiti and encounters Dominic Greene, a wealthy philanthropist whose organisation, Greene Planet, is heavily involved in ecological work. Most people think Greene a hero, but Bond doesn’t have that high an opinion of him. The fact that he first sees Greene trying to kill a woman called Camille has quite a lot to do with this. With Camille’s help Bond finds out that Greene is plotting to destabilise the government of Bolivia and install a previously disposed dictator, General Medrano as President. He also finds out that neither the Americans nor the British have much interest in stopping him.

One of the biggest themes in Casino Royale was the issue of trust. It seemed that everyone was obsessed by it. Le Chiffre couldn’t trust Alex Dimitrios because the men he supplied were being followed by MI6. M didn’t know if she could trust Bond because he had a habit of blowing up embassies. As for Bond himself he went through the greatest betrayal of all, finding out that Vesper was a double agent. The issue surfaces again in Quantum of Solace, but on a wider scale. White boasts just before his escape that his organisation has agents everywhere, and is proved right more dramatically than anyone would have thought. M is particularly bitter because her bodyguard had been in the post for years and passed every security check with flying colours. (In a nice touch, we find out that she even gave him small Christmas presents) The CIA have been promised oil from Bolivia and are not only unhelpful, but come very near to killing Bond. Before we Brits get too smug about our own morality, however, the Foreign Secretary pointedly tells M that, well, that’s the way it goes. We need oil and if we need to hop into bed with terrorists, so be it. That said, Bond does find some people he can rely on. Felix Leiter, who spends most of his time dripping with contempt towards his boss, gives him valuable information and helps him escape the CIA. M, who flies out to Bolivia to suspend Bond from his duties, ends up covertly letting him go with her blessing. Even Fields, a Consulate official who has been ordered to send Bond back home from Bolivia, ends up helping him – much good it does her, though.

The biggest surprise, however, is the return of Rene Mathis. At the end of Casino Royale Bond grew convinced that Mathis was a double agent. Mathis was promptly arrested and taken for, er, ‘questioning’. It turned out that Mathis was in fact innocent, and when Bond goes to him for help, you’d expect the welcome to be a trifle frosty. Instead, Mathis not only helps Bond, but actually flies to Bolivia with him. Now that’s what I call acting above and beyond the call of duty.

(On the subject of betrayal, I think the worst betrayal in the film turns out to be one inflicted on Vesper. Vesper became a double agent because her boyfriend had been kidnapped by the organisation and she was threatened with his death. Well, it turns out that things aren’t quite that simple.)

Another, rather more terrible theme emerges from Quantum of Solace as well. In Casino Royale M complained that the people who met Bond often died, either by his own hands or someone else’s. Quantum of Solace is no different, and one could regard it as almost comic if it weren’t so grim. When Bond chases M’s bodyguard, they are running through a crowd. The bodyguard turns and fires a gun into the mass of people, hitting a completely innocent bystander. We don’t know if she dies, but she’s clearly seriously injured. Another major character is unexpectedly killed (the victim of another betrayal). Taking both Daniel Craig Bond films, there are four Bond girls. Both of the ones in Casino Royale die, and another one is killed about halfway through Quantum of Solace. This makes the fourth, Camille, extremely important. In order to get rid of the spectre of death hanging over him, Bond must make sure that Camille lives. He has to break the misery that’s been pursuing him ever since he became a Double-O agent.

Craig’s films are thus turning out to be unexpectedly cerebral (and thank god for it, as we don’t want another Roger Moore). I was rather amused to see Bond gatecrashing a meeting between Greene and his associates, which is held during a gala performance of the opera Tosca. Before you ask, yes, they do use the Te Deum scene, as well as Baron Scarpia’s death scene. (The music after Scarpia’s death is used as the soundtrack to a shootout in a restaurant as diners panic helplessly, another group of innocent bystanders)

This is still a Bond film, though, and so it must have sex and it must have violence. There’s a bit of a surprise here – there’s no sex. Oh, there are Bond girls, and Olga Kurylenko, playing Camille, spends a lot of time in a rather skimpy black dress, but Bond never has sex with anyone. He gets only one kiss. I think this is the only Bond film in which this happens. Ironically, the traditional women for the titles sequence are back this time…

(Edit - it appears I was wrong about this, thanks to a trip to the men's room. During the minute I was absent, Bond went to bed with Fields. But even this shows me to be partly correct. Fields is not the primary Bond girl in this film, and very little is made of her tryst with Bond.)

As for violence, oh yes. We get a great deal of it. The director, Marc Foster, previously directed films such as Finding Neverland, and I’m not sure that’s really an action-packed film. But whether due to lack of experience or otherwise, the fight scenes are not as well shot as they are in Casino Royale. Foster is trying to create a sense of kinetic energy, with plenty of camera movement and quick cutting, but this is a difficult trick to pull off well. If you fail you simply confuse and irritate the audience, and unfortunately there are moments where this happens. Nevertheless, the excitement is still there, and the feeling of danger is on a wider scale than in Casino Royale. In that film Bond just had to be careful of Le Chiffre’s men and short tempered African rebel commanders. In Quantum of Solace Bond has to deal with an entire police force.

Quantum of Solace does have an advantage over Casino Royale with its action scenes, though, and that’s when it comes to pacing. Casino Royale was based on a book without action scenes and which had a pretty unhelpful plot structure in any case. The climax to the book comes only two-thirds of the way into it. Quantum of Solace doesn’t have this difficulty, and so can be more ‘audience-friendly’.

I mentioned that a Bond film usually has sex and violence, but there is a third element – a great villain. Casino Royale didn’t, really. Not enough was made of Le Chiffre. Dominic Greene gets rather more screen time, and the actor, Mathieu Amalric, apparently based his performance on Nicolas Sarkozy and Tony Blair. Personally I don’t think he has enough screen presence and even when he’s showing people victims he’s drowned he never becomes really threatening. On the other hand he does get some great moments, particularly his fight with Bond. At that stage he reveals himself as completely vicious, and it’s a pity such an attitude was not shown to us earlier. We don’t see his inevitable death but we do know what happens, and it’s fairly unpleasant.

(He also gets the best exchange of the film, receiving a contemptuous putdown from Bond at a party –

’My friends call me Dominic.’
‘I’m sure they do.’)

Olga Kurylenko, alas, makes even less of an impression. She does stuff and stuff happens to her, but she doesn’t stick in the mind much. Even without the tragedy of her character, Eva Green as Vesper Lynd was able to bring something of her own to the role, and Kurylenko just doesn’t have that. I do have to mention a rather neat touch – Camille has a large scar on her back. It is eventually explained, but only indirectly. Contrast this with characters talking VERY OBVIOUSLY about a hotel being POWERED BY FUEL CELLS. Well, gosh, I don’t know what that could possibly foreshadow!)

Fortunately we’re able to depend on our regulars. Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter, Judi Dench as M, Giancarlo Giannini as Mathis, Jesper Christensen as Mr White and above all Daniel Craig as Bond give the film their all and it shows. Quantum of Solace might not be so good as Casino Royale, but it’s still damned good.

By the way, the trademark gun barrel sequence is back, but only at the very end of the film. I’ve no idea why they’ve put it there.

(This was the first time I’ve been to the cinema in two years, and I have a couple of requests for advertisers and cinema owners. First, I come to the cinema to see a film. Yes, I might be interested in trailers for other films. But I don’t want to sit through half an hour of adverts before the film begins.

As for the advertisers themselves, I see you’ve got tie-ins with Quantum of Solace. Good for you. But do not show all the action sequences in your commercials before I’ve seen the film, please. Twice I actually sat there with my eyes shut so I wouldn’t see what was going on.

Right, rant over…)