Daniel Craigs second outing as the rebooted, reenergised James Bond leaves the blocks at full tilt, just as any self-respecting Bond movie should. This is a genre all its own, after all: one with a set of rules and tropes that even a 21st century iteration ignores at its peril, and key amongst those tropes is the concept of the volcanic extended opening sequence that leaves the audience hyperventilating The bizarrely-titled Quantum Of Solace is no exception the opening car chase is stunningly shot, a tight four minutes of brutal mayhem that truly lives up to the grand tradition of Bond car chases. All but trashing his Aston Martin DBS V12 in the process, Bond finally gets to a safe house and opens the trunk to reveal Mr. White, the mysterious criminal liaison that he wounds and captures at the end of the previous movie, Casino Royale. Suddenly the audience realises that this isnt just the next Bond film in a sequence, and it doesnt just follow on from the last: the action thats just taken place follows minutes on from the climax of Casino Royale. The James Bond were looking at is an angry, bereaved and dangerous man. Theres no reset button between episodes here, but the continuation of a movie that brought character development and dynamics to the idea of 007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYC_CBNtiM This ground-breaking premise should kick off one of the finer instalments in the series, so its a terrible shame that the movie turns out to be such a dud. Despite the highest body count of any Bond film (a study by a New Zealand university found it to be the most violent of the entire franchise, with 250 depictions of violent acts), the plot is nearly as incomprehensible as its title, the villain a fairly useless cipher who intends to obtain control of the water supply of a developing nation. Theres little peril and not much in the way of humour to leaven things after the initial excitement, the viewer is left to settle into a dull story detailing the pointlessness of revenge in amongst some dull political machination.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
