Release Date: NovRelease Date: Nov. 14Director: Marc ForsterWriter: Paul Haggis, Neal
Purvis, Robert WadeStarring: Daniel Craig, Olga
Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi DenchStudio/Run Time: MGM/Columbia,
106 mins.
Purists complained when Daniel Craig
was cast as 007 (A blonde Bond?!?), but the semi-reboot Casino
Royale proved them wrong. Craig's take on Bond turned out to be
lean and vicious. He's a far cry from any other version of the
character, but no less magnetic. Apply Trainspotting's
assessment of Sean Connery's Bond years: He's a muscular actor. Too
bad the muscles are most of what Craig has to leverage in his second
turn, Quantum of Solace.Release Date: NovPicking up mere minutes after the end
of Casino Royale, this film seemingly aspires to be little
more than a Bourne-inspired thrill ride. An opening car chase is
followed by a boat chase, which is eventually followed by a sequence
with planes. There's a motorbike in here, too; it's like an action
movie made by the Department of Transportation. Unlike Casino
Royale, however, characters rarely triumph in the fight against
motion. Even dialogue scenes are paced like high-octane setpieces.
There's very little downtime in this tale.
Bond begins by interrogating one of the
men responsible for the death of Casino's Vesper Lynde. Turns
out he's part of an organization called Quantum, which features
businessman Dominic Greene (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly's
Mathieu Amalric) as a prime mover. Assisted by the vengeful Camille
(Olga Kurylenko) Bond stumbles into a plot to control part of South
America's water supply. Despite a few perfectly staged moments (like
Bond's surveillance of Quantum at an overblown opera), the story
feels barely stitched together. It's not the silly Paul Haggis
dogmatic political dialogue that hurts, but the sense that there's as
little thought behind this effort as possible. Luckily, that's par
for the course with Bond, whose movies must almost be judged on their
own scale, and Quantum of Solace is far from the least
entertaining MI6 movie we've seen this decade.