Which one is this? The sequel to Casino Royale that sucked.
Who’s who in this one? Craig (Bond); Dench (M); Wright (Leiter).
Where did you first encounter this one? In theatres in 2008.
Who’s the bad guy, and what does he want? Mathieu Amalric as wimpy, Roman Polanski-ish Dominic Greene, a member of Quantum, who wants to screw up Bolivia’s water supply or something.
Who are the Bond girls? Olga Kurylenko as Camille, who is on a parallel revenge mission to Bond’s; and Gemma Arterton as Strawberry Fields, the death-bait.
Opening number? I quite like Jack White and Alicia Keys’ rage-ballad, “Another Way to Die,” though it’d be better if it was straight White Stripes. It’s set against a CGI montage of Bond alone in the desert, as a gargantuan woman rises from the sand.
What’s memorable about this one? How unbelievably badly the action sequences were directed. How no one, to this day, knows what the name means (except me). The opera sequence, which is the only outstanding moment in the film.
What did you rate it out of ten, from memory? 3. A near-total creative misfire.
What do you rate it now, having seen it again? Oh pitiable disappointment. Quantum is actually better-than-average Bond, something like a 7, though it was hard not to hate it after the successes of Casino Royale.
It’s time for us all to forgive Quantum of Solace. I’ve warped from the Bond franchise’s most significant outlier with 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Serviceto land in 2008 on another key bump in the road, the only direct sequel in the series. I was as pissed as anyone else when this film arrived in 2008, and have vented my spleen at length at the categorical error in judgment on the part of the producers in hiring Marc Forster to direct – a person who cannot, on the evidence of Quantum, deliver an action scene to save his life. (“Babbling the language of Bourne,” I quipped, “while understanding none of its syntax and grammar.”)
The action sequences in Quantum of Solace remain the film’s largest detriment. They appear suddenly, and when they do, the screen dissolves into such utter visual chaos that one has little choice but to hang on to the arm-rests and wait for the scene to end, then quickly check who has been killed and where the survivors might be going. The sequences can be somewhat better unpacked on blu-ray than they ever could have been in the theatre; this isn’t an excuse, but reminds me once again that the shots are in there – and some of them are quite impressive, like a camera following headlong as Bond jumps his motorbike off a dock to land on a departing ship, or a setup lashed to a gangway that gives way and drops vertically, with Bond hanging on to it. Those shots, however, are all so sloppily and brutally edited by Matt Chesse and Richard Pearson that they have almost no visual value in their final form. Blaming the editing alone is insubstantial, though; Quantum remains, as I’ve said, a producerial error in judgment more than anything else. The Bond caretakers hired Forster, Chesse and Pearson, and then let them turn in their work in this form – and then did nothing about it.
The opera sequence in Bregenz, where Bond attends a performance of Tosca that is serving as a venue for a meeting of Quantum higher-ups, and proceeds to turn the tables on the villains, represents Quantum of Solace at its finest. This is what the film is trying to do the rest of the time – complex, interwoven imagery with resounding tones both on-theme and off. Had the experiment succeeded, Quantum would be one of the most distinct entries in the saga, and would have carried the emotional wreckage of Casino Royale to a nobler, more balanced end than Bond muttering “the bitch is dead.” But Quantum of Solace does such an unbelievably shitty job of communicating its own plot that we have no goddamn idea what’s going on half the time. The film does better on repeat viewing, but only because certain expository points are so deeply buried that one can only ferret them out with foreknowledge of the complete plot. And so, we might realize on viewing #2 or 3 that Bond is, throughout the film, working his way through ineffectual baddie Dominic Greene to reach Vesper Lynd’s lover, to prove that Vesper was honestly duped, and not a Quantum agent. But that ain’t easy to find.
David Arnold’s score beautifully inverts his key themes from Casino Royale. Jeffrey Wright returns, (somehow) even cooler here than he was in Royale, and Giancarlo Giannini returns as well as Mathis, lending his gorgeous, sad eyes to Quantum’s meatiest dramatic scenes as the self-appointed caretaker of Bond’s broken soul. As a waify revenge chick and sometime ally for Bond, Olga Kurylenko fares well as the Bond girl, and is notable for being the only lead female in the whole franchise who Bond never sleeps with. (He does have an aimless fling with secondary Bond girl Strawberry Fields, which leads to her getting Goldfingered in a classic franchise grace note – albeit here doused with jet-black oil, rather than gold paint.) But as with Casino Royale, the largest strength in Quantum of Solace remains its Bond. Daniel Craig – leaner, hollower, and with somehow even bluer eyes – effortlessly strikes the secret agent’s perfect balance, even as an unbalanced man. In Royale, he made it safe again for James Bond to drink, fuck, and enjoy life while it lasts; and when the debt is finally paid at the end of Quantum of Solace, we believe he may yet do so again.
From A to Bond counts down the Bond movies, in alphabetical order, every day of the week leading up to the release of Skyfall. If you live in Toronto, Quantum of Solace is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on December 9 and January 2. If not, the entire series is available on blu-ray.