Quantum of Solace
(2008)
(SPOILERS) Way to throw all Martin
Campbell’s good work under a bus, Marc Forster. Quantum of Solace isn’t a Bond
movie that turns bad, the way Die Another
Day turns bad, although its action sequences set a new standard for lousy
incoherence, but it’s utterly banal, lacking drive or momentum in a similarly
manner to earlier Bond-out-for-revenge escapade Licence to Kill. The entire enterprise feels like the makers are
fulfilling an obligation to continue their story directly from Casino Royale, rather than actually
having one to tell. At every turn the finished picture is bereft of the
inventiveness and freshness that informed its predecessor.
The cardinal culprit in this, understandably,
has been identified as Forster. The kudos he received for dramas Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland likely attracted Eon to him as a guy who could
provide Bond with the (now) prerequisite character beats demanded by the
series. Forster fails even at that, though, and worse, he ensures the action is
borderline incomprehensible. As an overt statement of his intentions, he
brought in Dan Bradley, of Bourne
fame, to handle the stunt work, and then proceeded to follow the Paul
Greengrass route of making everything handheld; Quantum is brimming with shaky cam. Alas, Greengrass is one of the
few purveyors of such an approach who actually knows what he is doing, and Forster
seems to think a whole lot of cutting is a worthwhile replacement for any sense
of geography during action sequences.
His set pieces make you long for the
stately indifference of Michael Apted, which is saying something (Roger Michell
had been approached, having worked with Craig before, and one can guess that
the results would have been not dissimilar to Apted’s effort, with evident
joins between first and second units). The picture opens on a car chase, a very
grubby one (there’s a lot of grime in this movie), as Bond ferries Mr White to
be interrogated. But, for a car chase to be edge-of-seat, you need to be able
to see what is going on, and what our hero is trying to achieve. Instead, all
is confusion.
Not long after, Bond pursues Mitchell, M’s Quantum-planted
bodyguard, through buildings and over rooftops. The location is great, the stunt
work is often stunning, but there’s no intensity or excitement to the sequence.
Bizarrely, Forster sets up a horse race the chase will intrude upon so far in
advance that it all-but becomes a visual non sequitur.
Suggestive of pseudishness at the expense
of technical or dramatic aptitude, Forster elected that the action sequences
should be based around earth, water, air and fire. If only such fancy bollocks
had resulted in anything instructive. There’s a bit where Bond rams into a
boat, and another bit in a plane that ends with some CGI freefalling (I thought
they intended to put an end to overtly CGI-d action sequences; it didn’t last
long). Then there’s blowing up the (strikingly designed) hotel at the end, a
numbing series of explosions laced with rudimentary intercutting between
protagonists facing down their respective foes.
James
Bond: Can I
offer a suggestion? I really think you people should find a better place to
meet.
That’s not to say everything here is a
washout. The surveillance scene at the performance of Tosca, as Bond announces
his presence to the attending members of Quantum, is quite neat. Unfortunately,
straight after, Forster, with his usual scrappy visuals, squanders the opportunity
for a striking action sequence set to operatic strains. It should come as no
shock that Stuart Baird didn’t handle the editing; it was Forster regular Matt
Chesse and – perhaps surprisingly, but I guess you need the raw material to
work with in the first place – Greengrass guy Rick Pearson.
Notably, Quantum is the shortest Bond
movie (its nearest contenders are all ‘60s efforts). This was intentional on
Forster’s part, who rightly felt Casino
Royale was too long (quite unnecessarily, three of Craig’s entries have
been the longest three in the franchise), but even at close to 40 minutes
shorter than its predecessor, Quantum
frequently feels like a chore.
All that said about the execution, the
script is also complete botch. The idea of basing the villain’s plan around
water came from Michael G Wilson, presumably keen to show he also had some
creative thoughts after Babs came up with the main driver for The World is Not Enough. Wade and Purvis
provided their customary draft, rewritten by Paul Haggis and then further
rewritten by Haggis, Wilson and Forster, the former competing this latest draft
just before the writer’s strike struck. Not that what they had looks halfway
decent even in terms of bare bones, but this left Craig and Forster stuck
peforming rewrites during filming (Craig has said it was never meant to be as
much of a sequel as it turned out). Post-strike, Forster hired Joshua Zetumer
to rework scenes he was still unhappy with, evidently to little avail.
As for the title, I don’t actually mind it
(“The something of Boris - what can it
mean?” as wags Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish sang), but expanding it into a
double meaning (it isn’t only the emotional state Bond is seeking post-Vesper’s
death, it’s also the name of a nefarious group none of the secret services
anywhere have hitherto heard of) is too much; “No honestly, the title is relevant”.
I noted of Casino that I didn’t really buy into Craig’s Bond’s besottedness
with Vesper, and Quantum does nothing
to sell that point. I was similarly unconvinced by Dalton’s revenge mission in
response to Felix Leiter’s shark-infested leg in Licence to Kill. The one that would
have made sense never happened, as Lazenby opted not to track down Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever and the idea ended
up as a bit of a fiddle in For Your Eyes
Only. We are told that Bond here is filled with “inconsolable rage”, but aside from bags around the eyes I’m not
quite getting that sense from him.
This is Bond going through the motions,
meaning the nominal “purpose” behind his behaviour feels even less effective
than it would in a humdrum context. That rousing final scene of Casino Royale is telegraphed into a
movie stocked with a resolutely dull Bond
girl whose agenda packs none of the power it might (conceivably) have had on
paper. Olga Kurylenko is Camille, a Bolivian agent out to revenge herself (more
revenge!) on Joaquin Cosio’s General Medrano, who murdered her father and did
horrible things to her mother and sister – can’t Bond say rape? – before strangling them. When her final
confrontation comes it is, like the rest of the climax, plain tiresome.
There are a few notable brushes with
humour, which help the jagged little pill go down; Bond’s response when Camille
threatens him with a gun and he exits her car (“That wasn’t very nice”), and his remarked upon habit of killing,
Bourne-style, anyone he’s suppose to capture and sweat for information. But the
narrative, after the clear lines in Casino,
has reverted to sketchy business where Bond goes to the next location for
something-something reasons you’re encouraged not to care about. When you
aren’t invested in why he’s doing something, it’s best to make sure what he’s doing is actually engaging.
Along the way, 007 gets poor old returning
Mathis (Giancarlo Gianinini) killed, apparently by purposefully using him as a
human shield (difficult to claim it was just an accident), so Craig at least
has his own era’s Robbie Coltrane in dumping a sympathetic character in the most
unsympathetic of manners. He then throws him in a dumpster, because “He wouldn’t care”; the moment Bond
spends holding the expiring Mathis might have gone some way to make up for this,
if the old boy wasn’t forced to spend his dying moments administering advice to
Bond regarding his quest (“Forgive her.
Forgive yourself”).
It’s the gathering of the characters
Campbell chose around the edges of
Quantum that provide most of its meagre bright spots. The main thrust is
pretty inert, and unfortunately Craig is mostly unable to carry the burden
unsupported. He becomes just another rugged action hero. So, aside from
Matthis, the return of Mr White is very welcome, particularly his superior
laugh, though tied up (“You really don’t
know anything about us. Truth is, you don’t even know we exist”). And the
immediate reveal of Mitchell (Glenn Foster) as a bad seed is about as
surprising as the picture gets; a shame it’s so early on.
This is also the first appearance of Rory
Kinnear as straight-edger Bill Tanner, previously essayed by Michael Kitchen, while
Tim Piggott-Smith gets a solid scene as the Secretary of State, speculating
over the latest explanation for 007’s behaviour (“What’s today’s excuse? That Bond is legally blind?”)
James Bond: We are teachers on
sabbatical. And we have just won the lottery.
I have a feeling Gemma Arterton’s
Strawberry Fields wasn’t best received by those keen on a gritty Craig Bond,
but her performance is a breath of fresh air in otherwise arid terrain. She’s
far more engaging in a couple of scenes than Kurylenko is the entire movie, and
her posh totty performance is good fun (“Oh
gosh, I’m so sorry” she scatterbrains after intentionally tripping up a
goon in hot pursuit of Bond). Again, like Matthias, her fate is down to the
producers failing to recognise a good thing when they see it, and covering her
in oil, rather than gold, is a cheap gag no matter how fancily dressed up (Forster
would have us see it as a signifier of oil taking precedence over gold in globa
importance).
Jeffrey Wright’s return as Felix Leiter is
also very welcome, and it’s a shame his effortlessly cool incarnation has sat
out the rest of the Craig era. Wright rightly acts like he’s the main character
in his scenes, be it sitting quietly in flight while his loud-mouthed colleague
Beam (David Harbour, moustachioed and effortlessly sleazy) does all the talking
to contact/villain Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric), or meeting Bond at a bar
and informing him he has 30 seconds to make himself scarce before back-up
arrives.
M: Bond, I need you back.
James Bond: I never left.
James Bond: I never left.
Alas, Grand Dame Judi Dench has been
manoeuvred ever closer to the heart of matters Bond, popping up on location for
scant reason and required to double back on herself in motivation; one moment M’s
having 007 arrested, the next, on the meagrest of pretexts, Bond has her
blessing to bring the villain to book. Somehow the arc thrown up at the
beginning (“I need to know I can trust
you”), although it scarcely deserves to be labelled as such, is complete.
The irony is, as irritating as the preponderance of M has become, in this
picture pretty much every scene Bond isn’t in is more interesting than ones he
is.
So Bond is pretty much just doing the
standard no-frills thing of following the bad guy around and rescuing the girl
(twice, despite her supposedly being an agent herself, and then having her turn
to putty once she has disposed of the general). Greene occupies a similar
villainous hierarchy to Le Chiffre in the Quantum/ Spectre organisation, but
Almaric has none of the Mikkelsen’s creepy malignancy.
He’s also poorly written, allowing Camille
to hang around despite having ordered her murder at the outset, suspecting her
motives and witnessing her flagrantly undermining his business transactions.
When it comes to the climax, and he sets on Bond with an iron bar, it’s the
least convincing face-off in the entire series. The one strong takeaway (and it
isn’t as if Almaric isn’t a fine actor, but we never once believe Greene has
any real mettle or even determined psychosis) is the final scene in the desert,
where Bond leaves him with a can of engine oil (“I bet you make it 20 miles before you consider drinking that”).
M: What the hell is this organisation,
Bond?
What to make of Greene masquerading as an
environmentalist? Really, it’s no different to a Bond villain pretending to be an altruist, and this was admittedly Forster’s
point, referencing the shallow posturing of Shell and others who invoke the environment
while destroying it, although Greene Planet is as unrefined as the double-edged
title.
The terrain etched out here does at least
point the way to the multi-tentacled Illuminati conceit of Spectre, what with its figures placed at significant positions in
governments, including “one of the PM’s
closest advisors”. There are also repeated asides concerning the wilful
amorality of Western governments, which would be more pointed if the picture as
a whole was remotely astute. Beam mocks Leiter’s concerns over Greene (“Yeah, you’re right. We should just deal with
nice people”), later echoed by the Secretary of State (“Say Greene is a villain. If we refused to do
business with villains, we’d have almost no one to trade with”).
As for the general who wants his country
back, it’s as if the makers are aware of exactly how interesting this plot
thread is and put as little effort into it and Camille as possible, unless it
directly involves Greene (threatening the general that, if he doesn’t sign over
exclusive rights as Bolivia’s utility supplier of water, he will “wake up with your balls in your mouth, and
your willing replacement standing over you”).
Likewise, when we reach the coda, with a wintry
clime suggestive of Wesley Snipes at the end of Blade, Vesper’s apprehended Quantum boyfriend is entirely lacking
as the target of Bond’s rage. It’s supposed to be a victory that 007 didn’t
kill him (notable this, as Mendes sees Bond not killing Blofeld in Spectre as something ground-breaking),
but by this point we long since don’t care about the bloody Vesper plot. Just
get over her already.
Of course, Bond is working out on a limb
for much of the proceedings, par for the course for his Bond, who cannot ally
himself too closely to an inherently corrupt establishment. Casino did a far better job in this
regard, showing Bond as an instrument of destruction while simultaneously
pointing the finger at him. Unfortunately, it seems beyond later filmmakers to make
points about the system without identifying with their protagonist, to the point
of warping his purpose and motivation.
Along with so much that straight-up
flounders, the titles from Forster regulars MK12 are determinedly unmemorable,
featuring Craig and some flipping sand dunes. Also forgettable is the title
song from Jack White and Alicia Keys, despite an arresting (but typically
White) guitar riff. You’d be hard-pressed to recall David Arnold’s (final?)
score for the 22nd entry in the series either.
Quantum
of Solace filmed in Italy, Panama, Chile, and
Austria, but rather than popping, the locations whizz by in a blur of over-cranked
editing. It hit the $200m mark in budget, quite a feat for a picture that feels
so resolutely unspectacular. Yet it inevitably made a hefty wedge of cash, although
crucially not as much as its predecessor. The picture has since been generally
recognised as a creative failure, victim of the two steps back thing that seems
to get in the way of Bond playing a strong
hand for consistent stretches. Despite its slender running time, Quantum of Solace as guilty as a Bond can be; of being a bore, something
Forster’s excitable camerawork and editing only exacerbate.
