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Starring
Daniel Craig
Judi Dench
Giancarlo Giannini
Directed by
Marc Forster
Final Grade:
BRated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sexual content
a review by Heith Carnahan
The Rundown
The brilliantly understated Daniel Craig is back as everyone's favorite British secret service agent, 007. In this follow-up to 2006's much-lauded Casino Royale, Bond is coming to terms with Vesper's recent betrayal and assigned to dig deeper into an organization virtually no one knows anything about. The sinister Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) is buying up vast but seemingly worthless tracts of land all over the world under the guise of environmental preservation, and his associations with a recently-deposed Bolivian dictator don't bode well for Mi6, either.
Blinded by his own personal vendetta, Bond must uncover Greene's plot(s), unearth Vesper's own betrayer, if possible, and protect the stunning Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who seems to have her own agenda in all of this.
Both shaken and stirred
Let's just be honest with ourselves when it comes to the Bond movies of the past twenty years or so: first of all, the plots are immaterial. Bond's adventures will always, always revolve around some convoluted, overly-stylized and insanely complex plot to either take over the world or, more often nowadays, successfully execute some radical, far-reaching business deal that will make the madman in charge outrageously rich(er), always at the cost of either mass numbers of lives or the life of the woman Bond is currently bedding.
Next, the Bond girls represent little more than an endless parade of flesh for the predominantly male audience, their porn star names (Strawberry Fields, this time around) having been given much more longevity than anything the script allows them to contribute on-screen.
And surprisingly... they're usually pretty good. The Bond films, that is; the Bond girls achieve various degrees of notoriety and success, and Fields is no different this time around, except that she has, in fact, been called the "dullest Bond girl ever" by several critics online -- hardly a fair assessment, no more than she's given to do here. On its own, though, while it's difficult to tell Quantum of Solace from many of the others in the series, it delivers as well as any Bond film in recent memory with its intense action/chase sequences, elaborate escapes, multiple villains and double-crosses, and even that hint of a plot twist that suggests 007 himself might go rogue. Let's hope that status doesn't give him any illusions about a gubernatorial run in Alaska.
The Bottom Line
The film will certainly do well at the weekend box office, and it will ultimately satisfy fans of the series as well as more passive viewers who don't live and (let) die by Bond, but rather enjoy a good action film with attractive players. On that front, Quantum of Solace brilliantly finds an audience with nearly everyone.
-- Heith Carnahan, heith @ movie-popcorn.com