Bondathon: Quantum of Solace

Alright, MGM you have my interests again.

You’re keeping Craig? Great!

You’re making a direct sequel to Casino Royale? Oh, well, that’s never really been done before in this franchise. I like your ideas.

You hired Marc Forster to direct? Never really heard of him, but you know, I’m always open to meeting new directors.

Quantum of Solace, don’t let me down.

I was so wrong to think this in 2008.

The film opens not with a gunbarrel (ugh) but with a car chase (scratch that ugh) involving Bond in his Aston Martin and two goons in Alfa Romeos. It’s a rather standard car chase as the Aston Martin, much like the Casino Royale DBS, has no gadgetry other than standard bulletproof armoring. This chase is actually rather interesting because Bond is actually pushed very near to the limits. Where Bond in car chases of the past would be protected by endless gadgetry and armoring, the door of the Aston gets torn off in the beginning of the chase, so Bond is actually in quite a bit of danger. But, as usual, he manages to get rid of the chasing goons and the police and makes his way to downtown Siena, Italy, where he parks in a tunnel and opens the boot of the Aston, where Mr. White is lying inside.

After the credits (and an appalling song by Jack White and Alicia Keys which isn’t as bad as Die Another Day but still pretty bad) it’s revealed that this building is actually a small makeshift MI6 headquarters. Bond brings White inside where M and a few bodyguards are ready to interrogate him. M shows Bond a few case files involving Vesper’s death and how her boyfriend was apparently killed and thrown in the ocean, but a lock of hair found in Vesper’s apartment says otherwise, meaning her boyfriend may have set her up. Bond however swears that he’s not going to go out for revenge, staying interested in this, “secret organization,” that Mr. White keeps talking about. M begins to talk to Mr. White about the organization, but Mr. White persists that she really knows nothing of it, and stating that the first thing she should know is that they have people everywhere. He then turns to one of M’s bodyguards, who draws his gun, shoots the other bodyguard, attempts to shoot M, and flees with Bond chasing afterwards.

The scene where the bodyguard reveals his true identity is probably one of the worst shot scenes in all of film history. This is actually a problem which we’ll see in most of the movie, but I’ll talk about that later. Anyway, Bond chases the bodyguard, named Mitchell, through the streets and the rooftops of Siena. Both come very close to killing each other until they both fall into a glass roofed building, where they fight on a couple of platforms. The platform eventually breaks and the two hold on to a rope, both going up and down constantly while trying to hang on. Bond eventually grabs a gun on the ground and spins around, shooting and killing Mitchell. The movie then returns to London, where M is obviously furious about Mitchell’s turning, when our new Bill Tanner (Rory Kinnear) shows that Mitchell had a large amount of marked American dollar bills in his apartment which lead back to a contact in Haiti.

Bond goes to Haiti to investigate the contact, but instead, he kills him and takes his identity. He walks out of the hotel and runs into a girl in a car telling him to get in. The girl is revealed to be Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who was supposed to be killed by the contact in Bond’s place, presented by the gun within the contact’s briefcase. Camille attempts to shoot Bond before Bond exits the car, then Bond commandeers a nearby motorcycle to chase her down and investigate. She goes to the docks to confront her lover and boss Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric) the leader of Greene Planet and another member of White’s organization. Greene turns out to be the one who sent the killer out for Camille, which angers Camille tremendously, but Greene manages to calm her down before introducing her to General Medrano (Joaquin Coslo), the man who killed her parents. Greene sends her off onto Medrano’s speedboat with the general, and the two set off.

Bond counters this action and crashes a boat into the General’s boat, capturing Camille and taking her on a chase among the quay waters. Like boat chases before in the series, this one seems a little drawn out, but it’s entertaining all the same. Camille gets knocked out along the ride, and Bond leaves her at a port while he goes off to find out more about Greene and Greene planet. He follows Greene to a small airport, where he is boarding a plane for Bregenz, Austria. On board are CIA agents Greg Beam (David Harbour) and our old friend Felix from the last film. Greene is conversing with them about Medrano’s plan to stage a coup in Bolivia resulting in him becoming the leader. Beam agrees to leave it be in case anything happens, and in return, the USA will have a name in any future oil findings in Bolivia under Medrano’s rule.

MI6 gets Bond a charter to Bregenz, where all of the organization members including Greene and White are meeting up for a conversation during an opera performance. Bond gets himself a tux and an earpiece to listen into the meeting from up above the stage. He learns of a project known as the Tierra project, but not much about it, just that they all agreed to take a large stake out of their funding towards the project. Bond intervenes and suggests they all find a different place to meet. This causes a few members to get up and leave, including Greene, which Bond takes as an advantage to snap some pictures of the members while they’re leaving. He then goes to leave himself, but confronts Greene and a few henchmen in the hall, and a large shootout occurs. I do have to admire this fight scene because of the audio used: the movie’s sound effects and all get cut out and we’re treated to a blissful scene of just Bond and the henchmen fighting while we listen to the opera in the background. Bond fights his way to the roof before confronting one last goon, who ends up accidentally falling off the roof onto the hood of Greene’s car (a scene which subtly reflects The Spy Who Loved Me in a way). This goon turns out to be the number one bodyguard of Guy Haines, one of the Prime Minister’s closest advisors. Haines in turn frames Bond for shooting the guard and throwing him off of the roof, causing M to put an APB on Bond, cancelling his cards and restricting his movements.

Because of these restrictions, Bond goes to a last resort and visits an old friend: Mathis from Casino Royale. The two quickly forgive each other for their actions from the last film, and Bond asks Mathis for a favor: getting him to Bolivia. Mathis agrees and the two fly out to the location, where Bond is confronted by an Agent Fields (Gemma Arterton) who has been sent to grab Bond and send him on the first flight to London. However, seeing as the next flight isn’t until the morning, Bond and Fields check into a hotel and sleep together. Meanwhile, Mathis retrieves a invitation to Greene’s party in La Paz from his contact, the La Paz chief of police. Bond and Fields attend the party and mingle for a while until Bond comes in contact once again with Camille and Green. After a short, threatening chat, Bond takes Camille and leaves the party with her to get away from Greene. They’re driving through the city when they’re pulled over by police working for Medrano, who discover Mathis’ body in the trunk of the car. Bond gets him out of the car on the police’s orders, but the police begin to shoot Mathis’ body, claiming it was moving. Bond kills the two policemen and then allows Mathis to die in his arms.

Bond and Camille escape the city and trade their car for a plane. They learn about each other along the way until two helicopters hired by Medrano begin to attack. This is yet another pretty decent chase in the movie, as Bond has to use the huge plane as much to his advantage. However the helicopters eventually win, even after Bond manages to make them both crash, as the plane eventually gets into a nose dive and the two parachute into a sinkhole below. Bond and Camille take some time to talk about what their goals are. Camille explains that Medrano killed her father, then raped and strangled her mother and sister and left her alone, claiming she was too young to be any trouble, so she is out to kill the General in revenge. Bond explains that Greene had connections to the men who killed Vesper, and he’s interested in finding out more about the organization as well as possibly kill the man who set Vesper up. They agree to ultimately join forces and find a way out of the sinkhole, where they find a huge lake of water imbedded inside. Bond is quick to realize that Greene isn’t here for the oil, he’s here to make a monopoly by sanctioning the local water supply and creating a drought.

The pair travel back to La Paz and Bond goes back to his hotel where he finds M and Fields drenched in oil and dead on the bed. M explains that Bond is out of his league here, and completely rescinds his license to kill and tells her bodyguards to arrest him. Bond, being Bond, takes out the guards in the elevator and then proceeds to confront M. He tells her he’s not quite done, and he’s out to find the man that tried to kill her as well as the man who killed Vesper. M suddenly has a change of heart (I don’t really know why), and tells Tanner to track his moves and see what he’s up to.

Bond finally meets up with Felix Leiter in a bar. Felix cautions Bond saying that he has about thirty seconds before a strike team from the CIA will arrive to arrest him. Bond acknowledges that they don’t have very much time, but pleads Felix to give him some sort of information as to where Greene and Medrano are. Felix hesitates for a moment, but gives in, telling him about a hotel in the desert called the Perla de las Dunas, where Medrano and Greene’s final talks about the deal will go down. Bond thanks Felix and proceeds to run, as the mercenaries begin to enter the bar. He runs to the rooftop, taking out soldiers along the way, and manages to flee to Camille to begin their assault on the hotel.

The pair arrive at the outskirts of the hotel and they have a heartfelt moment where Bond asks Camille if she’s ever killed someone. She makes a gesture that implies no, and Bond assures her just to take a deep breath, and, “You’ve only got one shot. Make it count.” They both finally make an assault on the hotel, both going onto the roof and waiting for the precise moment. A Land Rover begins to leave the hotel and Bond jumps on the hood, seeing the La Paz chief of police inside. He yells, “You and I had a mutual friend!” before shooting him and attacking the guards. He breaks his way into the center of the hotel and gets rid of Greene’s henchmen and guards through a way of explosions, and finally gets Greene all to himself. Meanwhile, Medrano is inside a room getting ready to rape one of the hotel assistants, when Camille breaks into the room, saving the assistant, and makes an attack on the general.

We get some entertaining cuts back and forth between Camille and Bond fighting their respective villains as a huge fire begins to consume the building. Bond and Greene struggle to keep ground on a small platform while attempting to kill each other through various ways, while Camille and Medrano are fighting over a gun to kill the other in the room nearby. Camille manages to grab the gun and aim it at Medrano, while Bond is trying to make sure Greene doesn’t fall into the fires below. A gunshot is heard, and Greene scoffs that Bond just lost another one.

Bond pulls him up and then runs to the room to see what happened, where he finds Camille in the corner, crying, and the General dead. He runs over to her, and they get trapped in the burning room. The two accept the fact that they might die and Bond prepares to do a double suicide, until he sees a gas canister at the other side of the room, which he shoots, causing an explosion that gives them a hole to escape out of. As the two get out, they see Greene walking across the desert. Bond tells Camille to wait there and he gets into one of the cars in the garage and goes out to get Greene. The movie then cuts to Bond throwing Greene out after he’s received all the information he wants out of him, he then leaves Greene abandoned in the desert with nothing but a can of oil to survive on.

Bond and Camille part ways and then he travels to Russia to confront the man who set up Vesper. He finds him in his apartment with his newest girl, and he approaches the two. It turns out this girl is a Canadian agent who the man seduced, and Bond tells her not the panic, and to call her people to check their files and such. Later, Bond leaves the apartment, where M is waiting. He assures the man is still alive and that he got everything he wanted, and that she can do whatever she wants now. M tells Bond that she needs him back. He turns to her and says, “I never left,” before walking into the cold, snowy night, and the movie ends.

Then we get the gunbarrel. Good job.

So, you know, this movie was kind of a let down. I don’t necessarily want to say it was outright terrible, but for being the series’ first true sequel and a story about Bond getting revenge for Vesper, there could have been so much more that was done. The movie set up a lot in the first few acts with Mr. White and Guy Haines that was never really paid off in the end, and after you hear that there was this alternate ending out there where Bond goes back to kill Mr. White and question Haines, it just seems like something that they should have went with. But I suppose since Mr. White is finally coming back in Spectre, maybe it’s finally all coming together. I guess we’ll have to see.

Daniel Craig is still absolutely perfect as Bond, and even though the script isn’t the greatest (more on that in a second), he still gave his all. I can appreciate Olga Kurylenko as Camille. She’s sexy, smart, and she’s a damn good actor. But, that’s all I can say about the cast, as the rest are bland to just downright boring. Mathieu Almaric is okay at best. He’s not really a threatening villain nor is he a boring one. It’s just okay.

But I do have to say that the biggest crime is the quality of this movie. The constant shoddy cuts and the bad scripts are all a part in the fact that it just didn’t live up to its predecessor’s hype. I know that there was the whole writer’s strike going on at the time, and apparently Forster and Craig had to do most of the re-writing and such, but I don’t think that’s a very good excuse for it, and it sure doesn’t excuse Forster’s shitty directing. Even after watching another movie of his, World War Z, which is actually a personal favorite of mine, a movie which he doesn’t shoot as poorly as Quantum, I don’t know how he managed to pull this one out. A Bond movie doesn’t need shaky cam action scenes and random cuts to people who don’t matter, it needs to be smooth and silky, with a good story. You should have taken notes from Campbell, Forster. Shame.

I guess Quantum is deserving of a 3 star rating. I mean, I know it’s not easy to follow up such a fantastic film as Casino Royale, but there was some areas where they could have tried harder. Close, but no cigar.