Quantum Of Solace (2008)

I remember when James Bond was suave, discrete, and human (albeit more gifted and accomplished than most). In Quantum Of Solace he is a brutal thug with no concept of the covert aspect of being a secret agent. The new Bond steals boats, cars, clothes and is a public nuisance. Bond used to be believable (kind of) but his villains were wonderfully over the top, but now Bond has become almost superhuman and the villains mundane. What happened to the days when the villains has undersea bases, or private islands, or lived in hollow volcanoes? Now they hold up in a hotel in Bolivia and only pose a threat to the local villagers.

Daniel Craig’s first outing as Bond was quite good (Casino Royale), but now we are out of Ian Fleming novels and 007 has become a generic, American action hero. He could be replaced in this film by Jason Bourne or any Schwarzenegger character. The female leads use to serve some purpose in the movies, but Olga Kurylenko’s character is completely superfluous to the story and Mathieu Amalric’s villain is more a target for university activists than MI6. The movie is not just an insult to Bond, but an insult to the actors. Everything that was good about Bond is missing in Quantum of Solace, even Bond’s sense of humour and skills of seduction.

This movie looks like the producers had a checklist of all the things that should be in a Bond film but no idea how to write them in to a story. The logical narrative of the movie is appalling. It is like a porn movie with some pointless dialogue to loosely justify the dreadfully filmed action that follows.

I maintain that the best recent James Bond movie is Tomorrow Never Dies. Pierce Brosnan was perfect as Bond and Michelle Yeoh as his Chinese counterpart was his equal, if not superior, and the best Bond woman ever.