On French Axe Doofuses

6.5/10 Stars - Quantum of Solace

A new assignment for the Large Hadron Collider, discover the properties of the postulated solace quanta.

Ok, I’ll stop now. In fairness, Quantum of Solace is a really dumb name, not quite Octopussy, but still really, really dumb.

Not the greatest start but things do get better, although not as good as one might have hoped. As you may know QoS is the second installation in an open-ended series of films which is “rebooting” the James Bond franchise, the preceding film Casino Royale (reviewed here) was a smashing success in every way, including creatively. Your author tends to be more “into” thinking films and enjoyed Royale immensely, an impressive all around achievement.

Regrettably, while QoS is decent entertainment, it is plainly inferior to Royale. Yes, Casino Royale was always going to be a tough act to follow but what’s truly disappointing to the author of this review are the nonsensicality to the plot and lack of the moral/intellectual heft found in the previous film.

The previous film ended on a cliff-hanger with Mr. Bond shooting Mr. White with a gun, specifically: a ridiculously large and phallic gun and this film picks up almost immediately thereafter.

It seems that MI6 has a secret underground lair beneath the city (for some reason…). M and some staff promptly arrive and threaten Mr. White, demanding—by hook or by crook—information. ("You wont get it!" - sorry, couldn't resist) Information they don’t get because Mr. White has people everywhere, including−rather implausibly−M's personal bodyguard. An over-the-top but excellent chase and fight scene follows.

This film has unfortunately too many chase-scenes, one might even dare to think that the script-writer was just trying to pad things out, like the excess “ands”, “ors” and “pralines” inserted into gradeschool papers. The plot itself is not terribly good, it’s all over the place and more than a bit awkward; following the incomprehensible plot points is not an easy task, one is tempted to give up, sit back and enjoy the fights, which is exactly what the writers hope that we will do.

To say that the film’s causal intricacy is excessive would give a misleading impression of opificery, credit where due, and nowhere else. Of course, in-between drowning one of the lovelies in a tank of oil, Chekhov’s fuel-cells (guess what happens…) and French doofuses waving fire-axes, the film mistakenly gets a few things very right.

Chief of these is the Chief, M, head of MI6 and wonderfully, wonderfully played by Judi Dench is given a much more prominent role while the character is greatly expanded. Dench was horribly underused in the previous installation and mostly was stuffed into a dull office. The character of M is increasingly important because she is the only woman that Bond does not see sexually and thus the only one (female or male) who can get through to him.

The scene at the La Tosca performance (stories within stories…) is also deserving of mention, the set of the opera itself is gorgeous; the irony of shooting not bullets but photographs and wittily disrupting the conference call are in contrast to the ham-handedness of the plot at large.

The film even manages to make the downing of a fighter plane by Bond, in an unarmed aircraft and subsequent safe fall and landing from said craft (more or less without a parachute) entirely believable.

Of course, no 007 excursion would be complete without at least one female lovely to fawn over the hero The girls are very oddly handled. The first, a clerk by the name of Ms. Fields—who lacks a first name and a personality—is only a toy for Mr Bond to play with, similarly to the old films. Mercifully, Ms. Fields promptly drops out of the story in favour of new girl, Camille.

Camille is something of a mixed blessing, on the plus side: she stands up to Bond very well, has a good backstory, does her own fight scenes and doesn’t so much reject as ignore Bonds advances. On the other hand, Camille is—like most of the characters, a wee bit stiff for taste and her accent sounds peculiar (actress Olga Kurylenko hails from Ukraine but tried to carry a Spanish accent, your mileage may vary.) She is, though, one of the few characters not to be made completely of straw.

The thinness of the characters is disappointing. Except when he’s being ravingly mad, lead villain Al Gore Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) is a one-dimensional empty shirt. Green/Gore is operating under the guise of being environmentally happy-slappy but is actually (surprise!) out to make money… using a ridiculous Saturday-morning-cartoon-villain plot to divert water away from impoverished South Americans... I think. This bit didn't make much sense.

The other villain, CIA man Gregg Beam (David Harbour) would be forgettable, were he not so horrendously, patently idiotic. Beam is a odious, sophomoric caricature of U.S. Americans from an exaggerated European perspective and he is not subtle. Harbour wildly overacts and is completely unwatchable, if his inexcusable inclusion could not be prevented at the writing level, his scenes should have ended up on the cutting room floor.

Beam’s involvement centers around a equally cartoon plan to obtain Oil and I’ll leave it at that, nothing worth mentioning. The artificial insertion of politics into the film, while not fatal, is an extremely, extremely serious error. Politics are the second most powerful narrative theme and must be used with great care because they are tied to one specific point in space and time, because they drag the external world into the digesis and can greatly imperil the suspension of disbelief. This is unquestionably a post-postmodern film but regardless, to challenge credulity in this overt way takes considerable writing skill and we already went over that.

This entire subplot and all the actors and characters therin should have been deleted; it complexifies the plot but does not advance it. The main plot with the water simply fails to be belivable in the first place, let’s not weigh it down with even more heaping rubbish.

Where are the great villains? The Dr. Nos, the Auric Goldfingers? Engaging and colourful villains are essential to this sort of spy-fi fantasy, a fluffy metrosexual environmentalist with an axe just isn’t going to cut it. We don’t want baddies that read Details magazine.

There’s nothing wrong with a contemporary realistic villain, there’s nothing wrong with a metrosexual villan; what’s more wrong here is the execution. Combining of non-traditionally-associated attributes can be extremely effective if played straight and serious but the audience’s first (and second and third…) inclination will be to titter and point fingers at his $7,000 haircut and ridiculously emasculate preening.

Following a series of unnecessary huge explosions and the messy conclusion of the main plot point—whatever it was—Jamsie zips off to Russia to track down Vesper Lynd’s boyfriend (recall events of previous film). I’ll not tell you what happens but I will say that at least it was slightly clever. M rematerializes on cue and the film ends on the usual bleak note.

The best thing about the new franchise continues to be Daniel Craig’s portrayal of the main character. The characterization has been dumbed down a bit, perhaps the writers thought that an amoral killer should not be aware of his own amorality as that’s too complex for the target demographic’s intellect to handle. This oversight hopefully will be rectified in upcoming installations, (provided MGM sorts its bankruptcy thing out.)

Craig continues to be dark and steely and brutal and that’s exactly how it should be but the moral dynamic is sorely to be missed. His actions in this film are motivated, not by love as previously, but by loss of that love. His motives morph from brutish revenge to a search for answers and the closing scene with Lynd’s treacherous lover shows this clearly. Bond does, as promised by the title find that quantum, although it is indeed a very small solace.

Among its casting wreckage, garbled plot and decreased intellection, this film should be given a pass. Hopefully someone on YouTube will compile a video of just Dench’s scenes so we can watch those without bothering about the other bits. Dench and Craig cannot possibly be expected to carry the film on their own.

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