By Reviewed by Eddie Cockrell
THE rebooting of James Bond, begun so auspiciously with the 2006 debut of Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, takes a brave and ruthlessly successful leap forward with the cryptically titled Quantum Of Solace.
It is perhaps no coincidence that this relentlessly kinetic 22nd film in the series is the franchise's first sequel and, at 106 minutes, the iconic agent's shortest adventure. As a movie in and of its time, this is an audacious yet familiar iteration that proves brevity is the soul of a hit.
The action picks up in the middle of a messy car chase, with barely an hour having passed since the conclusion of Casino Royale. On a largely improvised mission to avenge the death of Vesper Lynd in the previous film, Bond runs afoul of his handler, M (Judi Dench), and finds a kindred spirit in a beautiful stranger, Camille (Olga Kurylenko).
Their eventful journey takes them from Haiti to Austria to Italy to South America. They're in pursuit of Camille's sometimes lover Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric, from The Diving Bell And The Butterfly), an amoral businessman whose environmental organisation Greener Planet is a front for the shadowy conglomerate Quantum. Camille's target is the exiled General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio), who tortured her family and is being wooed by Greene for a vast, undiscovered cache of water under a Bolivian desert.
The plot, which has nothing to do with the same-titled story in author Ian Fleming's 1960 collection For Your Eyes Only, is refreshingly old-school, given the franchise's past excesses (Roger Moore, anyone?). And though the story may be difficult to follow at times, this befits a film with such a wealth of international locations and a dazzlingly nervous editing style.
The director, Marc Forster, making his action debut after a string of dramas that include Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner, adapts well to the blink-and-you'll-miss-it style pioneered by Michael Bay. This has led many to compare his approach to that of Paul Greengrass, whose partnership with Matt Damon has catapulted the series of Bourne films to international success.
Yet to compare Bond with Jason Bourne, as many have done, is to miss the most audacious wrinkles in the franchise's new big picture. There are at least two culturally relevant reasons Quantum Of Solace is proving to be such a global box-office juggernaut. First, just as American filmgoers flocked to see rich people in tuxedos during the Great Depression of the 1930s, international audiences battered by war, global recession and assorted strife are looking for screen heroes and heroines who get things done, and are better off as a result. In short, to employ the piquant American vernacular, this Bond kicks ass and takes names.
Second, the Bond brains trust has always been smart enough, propelled by a propitious streak of luck, to select actors who represent the zeitgeist of the times in which the films have been made. Connery's buttoned-down boxer segued to the more well-rounded persona of that Lazenby fellow just as the 1960s began to curdle into political chaos. The less said about those Moore movies the better, though they certainly fit snugly in the Spandexed 1970s and 1980s in which he frolicked. Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan brought much-needed gravitas to the character as the 1990s revealed a new world seriousness.
And while many of the actors have had well-publicised tiffs with the producers that lead to their termination, Craig seems thus far to be completely in synch with the contemporary interpretation of Bond. He plays the agent as palpably physical and singularly focused. But this Bond is also a bit of a jerk, taking what he wants when he wants it and acting on an instinct that leaves little room for moral debate. Seen in this light, Craig is the perfect storm of Bondian class and mayhem.
So, too, in an age where everyone carries a number of communication devices with them, the Bond gadget era has drawn to a close and armament specialist Q has apparently been released from the payroll. More significantly, the major piece of technology on display is the touch-screen table used by M and her minions to plot the movements of people and currency - gear that will be in all our lounge rooms soon.
"There's something horribly efficient about you," an admirer says to our hero. "Is that a compliment?" he asks. It is, James, it is.