DVD review: Quantum of Solace

Published on Thursday 19 March 2009 10:34

(Sony, £24.45; Blu-ray £34.24 )

I NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE FUSS people made about Daniel Craig's first outing as James Bond, in Casino Royale. Though he was good, the film around him was pretty awful; it was a dull, turgid affair that played like an old-fashioned action movie playing catch-up in a world that now had Jason Bourne to deliver brainy, blockbusting thrills. Indeed, when Paul Greengrass unleashed The Bourne Ultimatum the following year, it exposed new Bond for the posing, pouch-wearing pretender he was and the franchise for the relic it had become.

That should have been the Bond producers' cue to ratchet things up, especially since the bewildering success of Casino Royale proved there was still an enormous audience out there for 007 movies. Alas, with a mandate to do whatever they wanted, with Quantum of Solace they chose to try and outdo The Bourne Ultimatum – simply by replicating everything in that film with even more breakneck intensity.

To be fair, if Quantum of Solace were any other action film, it could probably have got away with this. (Its breathless, turned-up-to-eleven set-pieces certainly make it a better movie than its soporific predecessor.) But this is a Bond film; it should be setting the action template, not slavishly following it. It's as if director Marc Forster was embarrassed by the fact that he was hired to make one of those period attempts to flesh out the emotional dimension of Bond (Finding Neverland was, apparently, the Forster film that impressed producer Michael G Wilson the most) and over-compensated by trying to define the character through brutal, non-stop action.

It's exciting, sure, but so much of it has been seen before that it doesn't leave you scraping your jaw from the floor. Only when Bond is escaping from the Bergenz Opera House and the sound of gunfire falls away to be replaced by Puccini's Tosca does Quantum display the kind of sophisticated blend of high culture and gutsy violence that should characterise an ultra-modern Bond film. And when it's not aping Bourne, it's aping its own heritage, with groaning references to iconic Bond moments from the past.

Nevertheless, Quantum does accidentally tap into something interesting about the character. With the film a direct sequel to Casino Royale, we're expected to buy into the idea that not only has Bond had his heart ripped out, but that this is what is driving his quest for answers. There's lots of chat from M (Judi Dench, even more matronly this time out) about how inconsolable with rage he is about the death of his true love, and he can't even get it on with Bond girl Camille (Olga Kurylenko) – a move almost as bizarre as Forster's decision to drop Craig saying "Bond, James Bond" from the film. That this emotional aspect never resonates is perhaps a failing of the writing, directing and acting across both films.

Yet the way Quantum embraces 007's licence to kill (if this isn't the highest body count in a Bond film, it must be close) suggests another reason why it doesn't connect: Bond is actually a sociopath feigning the behaviour of a heartbroken man. As Camille remarks, "There's something horribly efficient about you," and in this supposedly grittier world that the franchise now inhabits, it's certainly easier to buy into Bond as a ruthless psycho than as a love-struck superspy.