Let me get this straight, I loved Casino Royale. Daniel Craig and director Martin Campbell showed us a fantastic Bond, combining pure badass-ery with emotional realism, similar to what Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan did to Batman. However, the second time around, Batman was still fresh, while Bond’s appeal died just like every girlfriend he’s ever had.
“But it’s Bond,” you argue. “James Bond is always good, no matter what!”. Well, that’s where I point out Quantum of Solace‘s central flaw: it’s not Bond. There’s this weird blond-haired guy that talks and acts like Bond, but is as much Bond as a Bollywood movie would be its American counterpart. Remember McBain, that Arnold Schwarzenegger ripoff from The Simpsons? Remember how all of the characters would be rooting for him, while you would be snickering at all the cornball-cliches that his movies would violate? Yeah-pretty much that. Craig shows us nothing remotely resembling Bond, and the closest he gets to Bond is when he wears a tuxedo and fires a gun.
Solace takes place just after Royale left off. He’s just kidnapped some… guy and is heading down to his… secret base and there’s… other guys chasing him… and then there’s this plot thing in between all the booming action scenes that take place. Well, it’s more like a non-plot disguised as a plot, or a story so convoluted that it’s unnecessary, but we’ll forgive Solace for that because the other James Bond movies weren’t too big on plot either. But I do have to applaud Solace for somehow making explosions and fast-paced chases coma-inducingly boring, being both repetitive and lame. We have boat chases, car chases, plane chases, and more chases, non of which are interesting or thrilling.
The first handful of scenes promised a hyper fast-paced action ride, but what we got was a depressing rethink of an iconic figure of cinema. Bond has a personality that belongs in a completely different movie, and the “Bond girl” has, well, no personality. Strangely enough, director Marc Forster’s earlier movies include Stranger than Fiction and The Kite Runner, movies that are pretty much about emotion.
Another crippling mistake Solace makes is combining real-world politics with it’s plot. Politics? In a Bond movie? That’s just the thing I’m trying to escape from when seeing an action movie, and if this takes place before the initial movies, then… forget it.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh on James Blonde. I’m hating on a lot of movies lately, and this one has the disappointment factor that is packaged with it. It’s just that the point of Bond movies is to be different and cooler than other explosionfests, but instead, it’s bland, bleak, and bromidic. Important characters would die, but you just don’t care, because you’re presented with no reason to. There are some cool gadgets, and by gadgets, I mean computers that resemble the Microsoft Table Computer or holograms from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Speaking of which, the new Star Trek trailer is shown before the movie, and it looks like crap.
