Quantum of Coherence

Marc Forster directed the latest Bond, Quantum of Solace, as though he'd never heard of a Steadicam and it didn't occur to him that if he was going to use a hand-held camera so much he probably shouldn't have given it to a hung-over cinematographer with the shakes who seems to have been swatting away little flying pink elephants at the same time he was framing his shots.

Or maybe Forster knew what he was doing by making us watch his movie with the same feeling we'd have driving down an unpaved mountain road at high speed while trying to keep an eye on a pair of cats fighting in the back seat.  He wanted to keep us so discombobulated that we wouldn't notice that Quantum of Solace is just a string of pointless chase scenes interrupted occasionally by martial arts demonstrations and improbably fiery explosions with nothing but a conventional Hollywood revenge fantasy for a plot to hold them together.

Forster didn't have much else to work with.  Another martini joke, a clumsy quote from Goldfinger, and one---implied---sex scene.

Daniel Craig might be a good Bond, if he ever gets to play the part.  In Casino Royale the point was that he hadn't grown into the Bond we all know and love.  In Quantum of Solace there's no joke, no growth, no character at all.  Whoever it is Craig's supposed to be he's not Bond.  He's just a thug with a really bad temper.  The part might as well have been played by Jason Statham.  If Judi Dench's M wasn't around, this wouldn't have been a Bond movie at all.

I think Forster was apologizing for that at the end.  The signature sighting of Bond down the barrel of a gun that opened all the Bond movies before Casino Royale Forster has put just before the final credits roll, as if to promise, not as at the end of the other movies, "James Bond will return in..." but "The next one will be a real Bond, I swear."

Comments

[D.R.Scott]

After casting Dame Judi Dench as 'M', the producers of the Bond movies ran out of good ideas and I don't think they're smart enough to find another one.

Besides, it's already too late. As silly as 007's adventures were in the Sean Connery era , at least the gadgets and the cartoon villains made sense in that world, and the world where Miss Moneypenny, 'Q', and Goldfinger lived was a fantasy. Once the filmmakers tried to bring these outdated props into the real world was when the problems began.

In comparison to the superb Jason Bourne movies, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace is as relevant to the present day as Doc Savage or Tarzan. Sadly, 007's License To Kill has expired, and it probably won't be renewed.

[Kevin Wolf]

I admire the fact that you were able to get five paragraphs of analysis out of a movie I forgot entirely even as I watched it.

[coldcut]

Bond really lost its way when the Cold War ended, which is weird because thinking back, the movies weren't all that dependent on the Cold War in the first place. Now recently, they've decided they want to be the Bourne series, which are all Cold War movies in the first place. But of course they're not as good as the originals.

Bond's real problem is that the world caught up. All the crazy borderline slapstick gadgets, mad scientists making weapons of mass destruction in island hideaways, secret cabals of men trying to rule the world -- all that stuff happened. It's no longer goofy or fun when you've got a guy like Kim Il Jong who is for all intents and purposes a real world Bond villain who manages to be both more menacing and much goofier than the real thing. Who wants to rob Ft. Knox when you've got guys like Enron and AIG?

What I think Bond needs to really do is go completely off the rails. Not Get Smart goofy, but Grant Morrison trippy. The next Bond movie should be about a man trying to alter the world as a hologram while Bond fights ninjas that both exist and don't exist at the same time.

[justsaying]

I'm 48 and I can barely watch these movies, 007 or Bourne... And I love an action flick, but the cameras move too fast and I see no detail of anything -- it's like when someone starts using Photshop and uses all the filters at once ;)
I'm beginning to think that they do that to save $ on reshooting scenes, because shooting movies this way, you can use practically everything from a scene. All shooting errors become "style" ;)
Or I'm just getting old...

[Batocchio]

This film was pretty much a space-filler and mop up of the previous film, with a plot that's just inherently less interesting. (It also suffered a bit from the writer's strike.) It's too bad, because Forster's done some good work.

As for the Bourne films, per justsaying - I really liked the first one, but the line I used for the last two was, "if Jean-Luc Godard snorted a few lines of coke and then made an action film"... The rapid-cut, close-up, shaky camera style can work very well (the bathroom fight in Ultimatum), but I think it's best used selectively. What I find most frustrating about it when it's poorly deployed (besides the refusal to establish geography and space) is that lower-budget films use the technique to try to hide how crappy their fights are, while the Bond and Bourne films have expensive, well-staged stunts and fights. There's something good going on, but I'm not being allowed to see it, and instead am being given raw sensory data on the premise it's more stimulating. It's a coverage and directing issue, as well as one of style and taste. But I do know people who absolutely loved the last two Bourne films, so tastes do indeed vary. (Oh, I'll add that a film composer friend of mine loves the Bourne scores.)

[J.]

Check out the movie "Taken" with Liam Neeson. It's a good example of how action/spy movies are supposed to be done.