Quantum Of Solace
Cast & Credits
Actor Character
Daniel Craig James Bond
Olga Kurylenko Camille
Mathieu Almaric Dominic Greene
Giancarlo Giannini Rene Mathis
Directed by Marc Forster
Original running time: 1 hour and 46 minutes
After the gun barrel sequence. Wait there's no gun barrel sequence at the beginning? Come on guys! This is the third straight movie where you have messed with the beloved gun barrel sequence in one way or another. Is this really necessary? Say what you will about George Lucas, but never has started a Star Wars movie without "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...." My point is that the gun barrel sequence is picture perfect and shouldn't be messed with. Anyway, on to the movie... Bond is flying down the highway in his dark grey Aston Martin DBS being pursued by a number of vehicles including a black Alpha Romeo. Bullets are being sprayed every which way from Bond and the opposition's vehicles. The Aston Martin also is brutally blindsided and has a door removed. Sadly, the beautiful car is quickly deteriorating into a dark grey twisted piece of metal. During the car chase / shootout, I reminisced about how different cars have acted over the years in the Bond series when flying off of a cliff. In Dr. No, when the car was halfway down the cliff it exploded. In Goldfinger, a car exploded the instant that it went off of the cliff. In this movie, a car goes over a cliff, rolls over twice, and lands on a lower road without exploding at all. My oh my, how times have changed. Needless to say, James escapes with his life and drives into an underground tunnel in Sienna, Italy. He opens up the trunk and we see Mr. White from Casino Royale bound and gagged in the trunk. Apparently, this scene took place immediately after the end of the last movie. A pretty exciting opening sequence.
The title start out with 007 shooting his Walther PPK and us seeing his bullet traveling in slow motion over sand dunes. Many of the sand dunes turn out to be bodies - the bodies of naked women. Are you surprised? After the absence of them in the last film's opening, the naked shadow dancers have made their glorious return. The theme song playing in the background is called "Another Way To Die" and is performed by Jack White and Alicia Keys. It features hard rocking guitar riffs, pounding drums, horns, piano, and both artists' voices. While mixing all of these ingredients together was supposed to cook us up a delicious pizza, we instead wind up with a crappy tuna casserole with burnt edges. The biggest problem with this song is that White and Key's voices do not mesh at all. The song would have been much better if one of them didn't sing, or for that matter, wasn't there. White's hard rock doesn't go with Keys piano licks and vice versa. This isn't a case of chocolate and peanut butter, but maybe ice cream and spaghetti. While both are good on their own, they should never be mixed. What's with me and all of the descriptions using food? I must be hungry. *makes a sandwich and returns* The soundtrack is once again done by David Arnold and could well be called Casino Royale Part 2. If it ain't broke, don't fix it I guess...
We return to a scene with M talking to James as he slams hard liquor. She shows him photos of the supposedly recently deceased Yusef Kabira. He was Vesper Lynd's boyfriend that was abducted in Morocco that she was protecting. A body that was said to be him washed up on the shores of Ibiza without a face. M used a lock of hair of his found in Vesper's apartment and compared it with the DNA of the corpse and found out that it wasn't him. This leads to 007, M, and her assistant Mitchell starting an interrogation of Mr. White. White finds it amusing that MI6 knows nothing of his organization and says that they have people everywhere. Next thing you know, Mitchell attempts to assassinate M and flees on foot. All the while, a horse race is starting above ground. James chases Mitchell above ground, through the horse race, across rooftops, and up into a bell tower from which both fall and each have a mad race for their guns which James wins. This was a pretty good scene, but having it happen during a horse race made it seem kind of artsy fartsy and I am beginning to notice a lot of quick cuts and camera shaking in the action scenes. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I like watching much longer camera shots that use a zoom in or out to catch all of the action instead of seventy five cameras shooting at different angles hoping to catch something.
The camera next catches a dreary and rainy day in London. M explains to Bond that she knew Craig Mitchell for eight years and for five of those he was her personal bodyguard and that Mr. White disappeared in the fracas. They next are given information by M's Chief of Staff, Bill Tanner. Tanner explains that they took a note from Mitchell's wallet and that it was a tagged bill. It turns out that MI6 tagged bills from Le Chiffre's money laundering operations by intercepting illegal payoffs. A whole stack of these same bills were found to be sent to an account in Port Au Prince, Haiti to a geologist named Mr. Slate. Bond goes to the hotel room where Mr. Slate is staying. A vicious fight between the two ensues which results in Slate's death. Bond grabs Slate's briefcase and vacates the hotel. Immediatelty he is met be a beautiful woman named Camille that tells him to get into her car. They are being followed by a man on a motorcycle and she asks Bond to show her what is in the briefcase. He opens it and there is a gun and her picture in it. This causes Camille to try to shoot James, he quickly jumps out of the car, and then talks to the man on the bike that says that he was supposed to kill her. Bond borrows his bike.
Camille goes to meet up with her boyfriend Dominic Greene that tried to have her killed. His eyes look kind of like the roll-on applicators at the end of a deodorant stick. She gets extremely upset with him about how he tried to have her killed and he says that it really hurt him to do so in typical bad guy fashion. He also says that he believes that Camille had been using him in order to get closer to a Bolivian General named General Medrano who he happens to be meeting right then and there. Greene says to Medrano that corporations called his organization in order to get rid of the newly elected Haitian President. Also, his organization is planning on removing the leader of Bolivia and replacing him with General Medrano. All that they ask for is a large piece of desert in return. Medrano says that there's nothing there and that Greene can have whatever he finds. They agree and Greene give him Camille to sweeten the deal. This lead into a boat chase where Bond saves Camille and after coming ashore hands an unconscious Camille to a hotel worker and says, "She's sea sick." That's kind of how I felt after watching this and some of director Marc Forster's other action scenes.
Bond calls MI6 and asks what kind of infortmation they have on Dominic Greene. He is told that he is the President of the Greene Planet utility company and that he's buying up large portions of land for ecological preserves. James tails Greene and finds out that he's boarding a plane that's leaving immediately for Bregenz, Austria. We next see Greene board the plane and CIA agents Gregory Beam and Felx Leiter are on board. Wait a minute! Don't tell me that my long running man crush with Felix Leiter will have to end with this movie. Please don't tell me that... Beam agrees to not stop a coup in Bolivia if the new government agrees to give America any oil that they find. Greene agrees as long as the CIA gets rid of James Bond.
Bond arrives at the opera in Bregenz that Greene is attending. He notices that certain guests are getting a black gift bag. James punches out one of these special guests in the bathroom and finds an ear piece in the bag. Bond listens in to the group's discussion during the opera. He hears something about a Canadian agent, General Medrano, pipe line being needed by Greene, something called the Tierra Project, and that the organization is called Quantum. Also, we see that Mr. White is still alive and is one of the group's members. James tells them that they have to meet at a different place and certain members start leaving which he snaps pictures of. I'm not so sure if this was Bond's best decision ever. I would have listened in on that conversation a little longer, but that's just me. A firefight between Bond and Quantum members takes place with opera music playing in the background. Another artsy scene, but this one works better than the one with the horse race. Greene's men kill Prime Minister envoy Guy Hayne's bodyguard and Bond is blamed for it. Bond asks Bill Tanner to identify people in the pics and one is aforementioned Haynes, another is the owner of most of the mines in Siberia, and yet another is a former Mossad agent who is now a telecom giant. Bond tries to follow Greene to La Paz, Bolivia, but finds out that M has restricted his credit cards.
James goes to Talamone, Italy and meets the recently retired French agent Rene Mathis. Bond admits that he was wrong about him and asks him for help in getting to Bolivia, because he's the last man that he trusts. Mathis is a much better man than I am and forgives Bond for having him tazered and arrested in the last film and travels with him to Bolivia where they are immediately met by British agent Fields who is ordered to take 007 back to London by tomorrow. She takes them to a hotel where they are to stay as teachers on a sabbatical which Bond doesn't appreciate and he takes them to another hotel as teacher's on a sabbatical that won the lottery and then procced to sleep with her. That's my James...
That evening they go to a fundraiser being held by Greene Planet for the Tierra Project. The Tierra Project happens to be a group of ecoparks that are opening. Camille shows up at the party and outs Greene as scum in front of some of his would be investors. Unbeknownest to James, Beam and Leiter are also attending the massive party. This whole scene acts as a plot device to get Camille back into the story and to show what a worm Greene is. Although it's obvious, it's pretty effective. James and Camille leave the party and are immediately pulled over by Bolivian police. They ask for James to open the trunk and find a beaten and bloodied Rene Mathis in back. 007 shoots both of the cops and one of them accidently shoots Mathis. Mathis' last wish is for James to forgive Vesper and himself. After this heartfelt scene, James leaves Mathis in a garbage dumpster.
Our favorite secret agent and Camille trade the car for a plane and take it to look for the land that Greene recently bought. This leads into a dogfight with two other planes and a helicopter resulting in Bond and Camille having to parachute out of the plane into a sinkhole. Camille tells James that when she was a child that Medrano killed her father. He then raped and murdered both her mother and sister and forced her to watch the entire thing. Camille obviously wants revenge. Bond explains that someone close to him was also murdered. As they are discussing this they come across what once was a riverbed that was dynamited. It looks as though Greene is keeping the water all to himself.
James and Bond return to the posh motel to find M and several British agents there. Agent Fields is dead in bed covered in oil reminiscent of the scene where Jill Masterson was covered with gold paint in Goldfinger. M suspends Bond for the possiblity of killing a branch agent (Hayne's bodyguard) and blatantly disobeying orders. He is to be investigated immediately and is taken into an elevator by two men which he proceeds to beat up. Bond and Camille escape and James tracks down Felix Leiter in a bar. Felix tells 007 that the CIA is moving in to kill him in 30 seconds. He also tells Bond that Medrano can't move into power until he pays off the army and police chief. Also, Greene's bringing him his money at the a hotel called La Perla de las Dunas that located in the middle of the desert and runs on fuel cells. Bond gets out of there in the nick of time and my faith in Felix Leiter has been restored.
At the hotel, we see Greene meeting with Medrano. Dominic now owns over 60% of Bolivia's water and makes the General sign an agreement that is twice as much as what he's already paying to use Quantum (I mean Greene Planet) as their only utilities provider. If not, Quantum will kill him and put a new leader in tomorrow. Soon Bond and Camille arriive and there's a huge shootout. Without giving everything away, I will say that shooting fuel cells makes everything explode, that Medrano and Camille meet face to face, Bond and Greene meet face to face, and the way that both villains are dealt with in the end (especially Greene) is very satisfying. Bond finds out more about Quantum and that's pretty much it... No wait!
In Kazen, Russia James tracks down Yusef Kabira (Vesper's ex-boyfriend) and finds him with a Canadian agent named Corrine that's wearing an Algerian love knot identical to the one that Vesper wore. Needless to say, Bond is boiling mad! How will he handle this situation? Oh, and strangely the gun barrel sequence is at the end of the movie. Why for the sake of all that doesn't suck did they do this? I'll never know.
In the end, this is a hard movie for me to score. While I really enjoyed it because of Daniel Craig's performance and I liked the story, even though it was far fetched. But I would be lying if I didn't say that the movie wasn't somewhat flawed. I'll give it a...
3 out of 5 - Average for a Bond film. Word is that there was a writer's strike during the filming of Quantum of Solace and it shows. Apparently Paul Haggis could only send them a bare bones script and much of it was improvised. The basic story with a new SPECTRE-like organization is pretty entertaining, but it's clear that it could have been fleshed out more. Also, the movie is relatively short and if it were longer everything wouldn't have seemed so compact. The story would have had more time to breathe so to speak. The action scenes are exciting, but I didn't like the way that they were directed. On the plus side, I would have to say that the acting is very strong. I know that a lot of people dislike this movie, but I think that overall it's pretty decent. It's just that Casino Royale was such a tough act to follow. Another minor complaint I have is that as much as I like Craig in the part and enjoy the new direction of the series that he should lighten up just a little. How about smiling for once?
Cool thing to know: At 1 hour and 46 minutes, this is the shortest Bond movie which is odd since the previous movie was the longest.
Another cool thing to know: Felix Leiter was promoted and Gregory Beam was fired at the end of the film.
Yet another cool thing to know: After over a half a year, I am now done with this series.
James Bond will return in Skyfall.
Proud member of the SONIC SUPPORT SQUAD
Tag "Sorry man. Someone pissed in my Wheaties."
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