Review: "Quantum of Solace"
Following up one of the best Bond films made with one of the worst, 'Quantum' is nothing less than a crushing disappointment - a barely plotted, poorly filmed, hyper-edited and most of all utterly flat vehicle that commits a crime far worse than even Roger Moore's outlandish last few films - it makes James Bond dull.
It's interesting in the way that this new incarnation of Bond is mirroring a pattern created by one of his predecessors, Timothy Dalton, two decades ago. Like Daniel Craig, Dalton came onto a franchise that had become a punch line and in his very strong first effort, "The Living Daylights", delivered a serious and contemporary Bond that still kept many of the hallmarks which made it work (gadgets, naughty humor, exotic locales, elaborate villains, well-filmed action set pieces). His disappointing follow-up "Licence to Kill" however ditched that in favor of a more realistic and smaller-scope story of 007 going off the grid for revenge against a Central-American drug dealer. The end result was a rather generic 80's Joel Silver-style action film that almost sunk the franchise in spite of a few commendable qualities (such as Robert Davi's effective villain).
Just shy of twenty years on a similar situation has occurred, although this time the franchise is in no such economic jeopardy. "Casino Royale" brilliantly brought the Bond film franchise into the 21st century - well cast, smartly written and deftly directed, it ground Bond in a more serious and modern tone but held tight to the character quirks and light touch of male fantasy which made the films work. 'Solace' ditches all that, opting for the already rather common format of action movies this decade - a cold, brutal loner with a tortured past and no personality out for revenge (preferably drawn out across several serialized sequels). It would be fine if he had either a compelling story or emotional arc to follow but in this case he has neither - prompting the film to play out very much like the flat middle act of a much larger film.
The most glaring surface fault is also its most obvious influence - the hyper-kinetic filming & editing style of the Paul Greengrass-directed "Bourne" sequels. Like it or not that film series signature style of sacrificing clarity, character depth and scope for relentless intensity has become a frustratingly copied trend by lazy filmmakers to pull in a Redbull-addicted generation brought up on 'blink and you're dead' FPS video games. The doubly bad news is that the lifting here seems to come from the confusingly shot 'Supremacy' rather than its more cinematically effective follow-up 'Ultimatum' where Greengrass acknowledged a need for wider establishing shots, less jittery camera operators, and cuts of more than two seconds length so we as an audience could follow the action.
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