Quantum of Solace

In the B.C. (Before Craig) era, James Bond films were cinematic bon-bons. Lightweight, sugar-laden confections without context or consequence. Beautiful women were wooed, gadgets were deployed, bad guys were dispatched with a quip, with the audience safe in the knowledge that the next Bond movie down the pike would have an entirely new set of villains and sexpots and Bond, with a bemused smile on his face, would be there to kick butt, none the worse for wear. The Daniel Craig reboot that began with 2006's Casino Royale and continues with Quantum of Solace brings something new to the Bond franchise: an overriding plot and character arc that stretches from film to film. Quantum picks up within an hour of the end of Casino, with Daniel Craig's Bond seeking vengeance for the death of his love, Vesper Lynd, due to the machinations of an shadowy global conspiracy. This ambitious approach has it's advantages: in two films, Daniel Craig's James Bond has made more of an impression as a multi-dimensional character than Roger Moore's did in seven. The danger of a trilogy, which the Craig Bond films are revealing themselves to be, is that the middle film is usually the weakest.


For all of its slam-bang action, exotic locales and Bond angst, Quantum of Solace is finally unsatisfying, as it sets up an epic confrontation between Bond and a worldwide criminal organization that must be left for the next movie to be dealt with. One hopes that two movies worth of vague suggestions about the nefarious QUANTUM group will eventually pay off, but in Quantum of Solace, all that the audience can look forward to is a plot that is simultaneously overstuffed and thin. There are plenty of globe-trotting action sequences, including a car chase on winding Italian mountain roads, a boat chase in Haiti and an inexplicable showdown in an empty, hydrogen-powered hotel in the middle of the Bolivian desert, but because Bond's enemy is so ill-defined, the stakes are unclear, which makes it hard to invest too heavily in the outcome. It doesn't help that director Marc Forster stages the action with a marked lack of invention, the only exception being a poetic shootout at an opera house that still manages to evoke unwelcome memories of The Godfather Part 3.

Quantum tries to compensate for the lack of a compelling enemy or satisfying plot by focusing on James Bonds' struggle to come to terms with the death of Vesper. Daniel Craig is all coiled intensity and glowering rage, with most of the trademark Bond wit strangled by grief. Bond takes out all this pain on the world, one broken-necked goon at a time. In this film, Bond is absolutely no fun, but his emotional journey is not particularly interesting, either. Like the action scenes, it rings the same familiar tones of a host of other action films. Nothing about the character connects to the rich legacy of "James Bond." This includes the ostensible "Bond girl," Olga Kurylenko, who is far too obsessed with her own personal losses and revenge plans to pay Bond much romantic attention.


After the arc-ridiculousness and nancing-about of Pierce Brosnan, it was clear that the Bond films needed a revamp. Daniel Craig has made a capable, indeed bad-ass Bond, and brings a needed gravity and physical presence to the role. Two movies into his tenure, however, a disturbing trend has emerged. The ambitious plan to deepen the character of James Bond by giving him emotional baggage has, in Quantum of Solace, served to render Bond somewhat generic. The man punching his way across five time zones in this movie could be any number of wronged and broken vengeance-junkies to have graced cinema screens in the past few decades. At some points, he brings to mind the Punisher in a tuxedo instead of Kevlar. "Depth" is thought to be an objectively good thing for a film character to have, but James Bond is somewhat defined by his shallowness, his ironic detachment, his sang froid. Making him into a standard-issue revenge seeker drains him of that electrifying coolness that has made Bond such an indelible figure in popular culture. This grief-stricken James Bond knows how to brood like no other, but he's no longer a guy you'd want to have a vodka martini with. Dude would just bum you out.