My first watch of Daniel Craig’s second outing as James Bond, 2008’s Quantum Of Solace, was a memorable one that (I’m sure to the utter boredom of many) I still use as a fine cinema going anecdote.
Unfortunately it had little to do with the film being of high quality and more to do with a rather enthusiastic/inebriated member of the audience giving us his version of a director’s commentary – but at least it made it an enjoyable experience, which I’m not sure the film alone would have entirely managed to give.
After the exceptional return to form that was Casino Royale, unusually for the series this picks up right after as, following a scrappily executed car chase, it’s revealed that Bond has Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) in the boot of his car and is taking him for interrogation by MI6 but, before that can happen another chase ensues, this time on foot over the rooftops of Sienna.
While this is all well and good it feels somewhat by the numbers and, as the film progresses, the precision of storytelling and inventiveness of bringing the franchise up to date that marked Casino Royale as so impressive, falls by the wayside.
Performance-wise everyone does their utmost, Craig again does a great job with what he’s given to further establish his version of the super spy, Judi Dench continues to build her part as M and Olga Kurlyenko does her best as the female lead but the character is rather too thin.
Along with them Gemma Arterton doesn’t give her best performance but I don’t think that’s entirely her fault either as her only real reason for being present is to suffer an oily version of the fate of Jill Masterson in Goldfinger.
So far that amounts to a slightly too convoluted plot (involving oil fields, land ownership and CIA involvement in a South American coup) and an uninspired script that relies on too much obvious exposition and paper thin characters.
All that could be saved by a couple of things.
First would be a good villain, but instead we get Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a rather obviously named ‘eco-businessman’ who, it’s clear from the start, is working for the same organisation as Mr. White and (formerly) Le Chiffre (here named Quantum but clearly meant to be a reboot of SPECTRE, just I don’t think EON had the rights issues sorted yet) and has, at best, mixed and somewhat confused motivations while feeling like a lesser version of Mads Mikkelsen’s villain from the previous film.
The other thing would be the action scenes but, as I’ve already hinted, these feel, while not bad, workmanlike with a few too many moments that rely on visual effects and others that just seem there to draw our attention away from asking too many questions about the plot while generally they lack the ‘physical geography’ to make them entirely successful – though it scores over Thunderball in not being in underwater silent slow motion at least.
I have to say that I’m not sure the fault of all of this can lay with director Marc Forster or the production team (though some certainly does) as the film was one of several victims of the 2007-08 Writer’s Guild Of America strikes which meant the writing was at best rushed, while it also appears the producers had trouble firming up a director with Forster not being their original choice.
Really that’s only slight consolation as Quantum Of Solace remains now, as it was on it’s release, an inconsistent mess that manages to feel both rushed and overlong (despite only clocking in at just over 100 minutes) that’s ultimately uninspired and falls flat at virtually every moment it should soar, and even the closing action sequence, in a seemingly spectacular looking hotel in the middle of the Atacama Desert, doesn’t seem to deliver in the way it’s intended.
Tommy Girard 
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