(Imagine, if you will, if James Bond slept with Jason Bourne. Now imagine if they had a child together. Imagine what that kid would look like. Now, drink a whole bottle of Tequila to get rid of that image. Bleeeech. )
CAST: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Matthieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini, Jesper Christensen, Gemma Arterton, Stana Katic.
DIRECTOR: Marc Forster
WARNING: SPOILERS and Bourne-Bond comparisons up ahead….
After the worldwide success of CASINO ROYALE and Daniel Craig as super-spy James Bond, the 007 producers pretty much fast-tracked the next Bond film. It was to be the first official sequel in the series, with the events from CASINO ROYALE carrying over and influencing it.
Around the time CASINO ROYALE hit big, though, the Jason Bourne films were also starting to leave their mark on movie-goers. Those films were edgy and diverted from the sometimes deliberate pace of the Bond films by moving like a runaway bullet, sparing no time for quips and fancy gadgets and liaisons with women. Surely noticing the high grosses of THE BOURNE IDENTITY, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, and THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, the 007 producers must have decided to incorporate some of the Bourne traits into the latest James Bond adventure, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, including: a break-neck pace, shaky-cam action scenes, nonexistent sex with the leading lady, and a near-silent, menacing Bond. Needless to say, QUANTUM OF SOLACE divided audiences and, especially, Bond fans.
Much like LICENCE TO KILL from 1989, the latest Bond outing veered from the tried-and-true Bond formula. And not to everyone’s delight. To be fair, though, LICENCE TO KILL did allow Bond to bang both Bond girls. In QUANTUM OF SOLACE Bond bangs only one. Which, for him, is like celibacy.
QUANTUM OF SOLACE starts almost immediately after the events of CASINO ROYALE. At the end of the latter, Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) was basking in the sun on his Lake Garda estate. Then he got thanked for saving Bond’s testicles earlier - by getting blasted in the knees by Bond himself. How’s that for gratitude? You’d think the jerk would’ve let White, I don’t know, blow him or something.
But nope, Bond clearly is not into experimenting. While Mr. White makes a mental note not to let Bond manipulate him through promised sexual favors ever again, Bond whisks him off to a safe house in Siena for an interrogation session with M (Judi Dench) and her movable staff of medieval torturers.
However, White just laughs in her fucking face when she threatens him, implying that “we have people everywhere.” By “implying,” I actually mean he looks at one of M’s flunkies and bellows “KILL THE BITCH!” Which the flunky does.
Unfortunately, he misses M who, despite being 2,300 years old, is fairly quick on her feet. Bond gives chase, leading to a race across the tiled roofs of residential Siena - leading to a lot of pissed-of homeowners. Bond eventually catches up to the flunky and they engage in a dazzling battle centered around some scaffolding and hanging ropes.
Before we can actually figure out what is happening, Bond shoots the flunky in the face. When he gets back to the safe house, he finds that : (1) M and her other flunkies are gone, (2) Mr. White is gone, and (3) Bond better protect his nuts now since Mr, White will certainly want revenge.
Back in London, Bond quickly discovers that money from the killer flunky’s wallet is tied into Le Chiffre’s (read: bad guy from CASINO ROYALE) money-laundering operation. Furthermore, they identify similarly-tagged money that was just wired to an account in Haiti, obviously a payment to someone for services rendered - or about to be.
Coincidence? M and Bond apparently don’t think so, because before you know it Bond is in Port-Au-Prince beating the crap out of then killing the recipient of the money. Passing himself off as the real thing, Bond meets up with Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko). Playing along and engaging in a bit of Improv, Bond quickly deduces several things: (1) the guy he just killed must be an assassin sent to kill Camille, (2) Camille was obviously expecting someone a lot geekier, and (3) she likes to use her gun when disappointed.
Narrowly escaping getting shot, Bond manages to jump out of her car and tail her to the Port-Au-Prince docks. There, he sees her conversing with a short sleazebag named Dominic Green (Matthieu Amalric), who is apparently a business colleague. Enraged that Green apparently set her up to be killed, Camille demands an explanation.
Green, by way of an answer, recounts a bizarre story about how his mom used to teach piano lessons to teenaged girls when he was a kid, and how he had a crush on one of them - until he overheard her saying nasty things about him. So, he took an iron…. Green lets that last bit hang there, expecting Camille to somehow put two and two together and, I guess, be terrified.
Camille, however, just stares at Green with such a look of confusion that you almost expect her to turn to the camera and ask, “Does anyone know what the fuck this needledick is talking about? Did he iron that chick‘s clothes or something?”
Before the Camille-Green bonding can get any worse, General Medrano shows up on his boat. Apparently, Camille used Green to try to get to Medrano because… well, I’ll tell you later. Needless to say, Green is an insecure bastard who doesn’t like being cast aside for fatter, sleazier specimens like Medrano - so he basically throws Camille under the bus by giving her as a gift to slimy general.
Camille, for her part, takes this in stride. At least until Bond crashes the party and pulls her off Medrano’s boat - forcing her to show her gratitude by: (1) calling Bond an “idiot”, (2) smacking his face, (3) yanking his hair, (4) and promptly getting knocked out when one of the pursuing boats slams into theirs.
Fortunately, Bond manages to fight off the baddies on his own and makes a getaway. Arriving at a beach resort, Bond hands off an unconscious Camille to a male hotel staffer - who basically explodes in his pants at the Most Perfect Present Ever. Of course, given how feisty we’ve seen Camille is when she’s awake, his joy is short-lived.
Anyhow, Bond trails Greene to Vienna, Austria where Bond sneaks into an opera house. Evidently, Green belongs to a super-secret organization called Quantum, and the Quantum Executive Team likes to hold their meetings at public events - where they keep in touch via earpiece. This allows Bond to easily crash their party when he scores an earpiece of his own.
It goes without saying that the Quantum crew don’t take kindly to this, and send their goons after him. Naturally, Bond beats them and manages to deduce that Green is headed on to Bolivia. Just as he’s booking his own tickets, he discovers that his loving mother figure M has decided to show her unerring support for him by cancelling his credit cards.
Realizing he needs a Plan B, pronto, Bond heads over to Italy to visit…. Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini). Now, if you recall, Bond basically accused Mathis of being a baddie in CASINO ROYALE. So, by going to him for help, Bond must think that one of the following applies: (1) Mathis is a very forgiving person, (2) Mathis is not a forgiving person but Bond is such a stud-muffin that even an unforgiving hetero like Mathis would instantly forgive him, or (3) Mathis was probably tortured so thoroughly by MI-6 that he doesn’t remember that Bond basically threw him under the bus in the last movie.
In any case, after some pouting that would put your average upset toddler to shame, Mathis finally decides to help Bond.
Bond and Mathis land in Bolivia, but are immediately accosted by Agent Fields (Gemma Arterton) who tells them she has been ordered to keep Bond close until she can put him back on the next plane leaving for London. When Bond finds out that the flight isn’t until the next day, he fairly vibrates with joy, knowing that: (1) he has time to chill out in a luxurious suite after such a long flight, (2) he has time to sample the local cuisine before leaving the next morning, and (3) he will have an opportunity to make Fields come hard at least four times - thereby ensuring her support in his quest to track Green down.
Sure enough, Bond lures Fields into his suite, where he promptly fucks her in at least eighteen different positions. At the end of it all, he asks Fields if she’ll accompany him to a party. Fields, having had her world rocked at least eighteen times in the last two hours, pretty much tells him that she would accompany anywhere he wants her to.
At the party, which turns out to be a benefit for Green’s “philanthropic” pursuits, who should make a surprise re-appearance but Camille herself. Swooping in just in time to hear Green snow a whole group of potential donors and inventors with his “I care about the Earth really I do” schpiel, Camille sets things straight by basically telling everyone what a lying, polluting, and corrupting sack of shit Green is, and that they are much better off investing their money in BlockBuster or Netflix.
Enraged that she has cost him some potential moolah, Green gets Camille alone on the balcony where he tries to push her over the edge. Fortunately, Bond has been observing their entire exchange - and interrupts the would-be assassination.
Squiring Camille away from Green, Bond enlists her aid in trying to dig up dirt on one of Green’s projects based in the desert. This leads to a dogfight between two planes that are most definitely not state of the art. Which is probably why Bond and Camille have to bail out with only one parachute - and land inside a sinkhole deeper than Robert Redford’s wrinkles.
There, Bond and Camille open up to one another. Camille tells him that Medrano killed her family and burned her as a child, and that she will never be able to find peace until she chops off his penis and forces it down his own throat.
Okay, she doesn’t actually say that. But that’s what I would do. Which is probably why they’ll never base a Bond girl on me. Anyhow, Bond also shares that he lost someone and that he’s using Greene to find out who was responsible for Vesper‘s betrayal. Camille responds by saying, “Dude, get over it. I heard she was a major pain. There are a lot of vaginas in the sea. Like mine.”
At any rate, Bond and Camille manage to get out of the sinkhole and return to the hotel, where Bond discovers: (1) Fields has been given the GOLDFINGER treatment by being killed and painted head-to-toe - but in oil because Bolivia can’t afford gold. (2) Fields had discovered that M was on her way to Bolivia and tried to warn him, and (3) M looks fat wearing a white-and-khaki suit.
Fortunately, Bond sees that M is not at all happy with his shenanigans getting yet another woman killed, and keeps his fashion opinions to himself. Bond subsequently manages to escape and hooks up again with Camille. With some valuable info from Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), the dynamic duo trace Medrano and Green to a hotel in a desert so utterly unattractive and isolated, you have to wonder what kind of idiot would put a goddamn hotel there.
Long story short, Bond and Camille confront the baddies with (1) Camille crushing Medrano's nuts in her hands before shooting him between the eyes, and (2) Bond ultimately draging Green out in the middle of the desert to die in the heat. Later, Bond and Camille go separate ways - but not before their eyes linger on one another, obviously contemplating some sweaty parking lot sex. But having been told that they need to keep the running time to a more Bourne-like 106 minutes, they decide to just resort to either a cold shower later - or maybe some masturbation.
The film ends with Bond finally tracking down Vesper’s scum boyfriend from CASINO ROYALE - just as the bastard’s about to brainwash yet another unsuspecting woman - this one named Corinne (Stana Katic). “Thank you,” Corinne whispers to Bond as he asks her to please leave him alone with the scumbag. “No worries,” Bond replies. “And please tell the silver-haired lady outside that I’ll be out when I’m done feeding this guy his dick.”
THE END.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: Just like LICENCE TO KILL before it, QUANTUM OF SOLACE divided audiences by being very un-Bond-like. Now, how attached you are to those trademarks will determine how much you tolerate QUANTUM OF SOLACE’s deviations. Personally, I liked it just as much as CASINO ROYALE. Just like two kids who are both awesome in their own way, and whom a parent would be loathed to compare to see who’s better, I have affection for both films. I love CASINO ROYALE for being an elegant yet edgy adventure that has all the trademark Bond-isms - but modernizes it to avoid being corny. I love QUANTUM OF SOLACE because it is so streamlined, gritty, and unconventional for a Bond film - but yet also melancholy and brooding.
Also, I believe that Camille as played by Olga Kurylenko makes for a better Bond girl than Vesper as played by Eva Green. The opposite might be true if Vesper had been played by a more expressive actress, or Camille by a less expressive one. Kurylenko is able to suggest so many deeper layers to Camille by a simple sad glance or a wary look. If Vesper had been played by Kurylenko, I might actually favor CASINO ROYALE more. As it is, I love both adventures equally. In the end, it came down to the women. CASINO ROYALE could’ve been more effective, but was held back by its leading lady. QUANTUM OF SOLACE could’ve been less effective, but was elevated by its leading lady. The result: a draw - putting both films on the same level.
If CASINO ROYALE was the sling shot being gradually pulled back - then QUANTUM OF SOLACE is the resulting rock being catapulted into the air - fast and deadly and uncontrollable. One cannot exist with the other, and like twins - they are similar, yet also different. Similar in the sense that they are both great action-thrillers that not only entertain you - but also make you feel. Different in the sense that while CASINO ROYALE is like the older brother who is mature, poised, and more cautious, QUANTUM OF SOLACE is the younger brother who is reckless, impetuous and unpredictable - but, in his own way, the much wiser one.
