Quantum of Solace

Mourning becomes James Bond in Quantum of Solace, the latest 007 epic. Short on sense, long on action, the 22nd Bond spy thriller kicks off with an ice-blooded, melancholic James Bond (Daniel Craig) so beaten down by the loss of Vesper Lynd, his lover in Casino Royale, that he seems intent on trashing himself and the world around him. Bond does death-wish turns in his Aston Martin while being chased by a marauding Alfa Romeo, barely escapes doom in a down-bound prop plane and wreaks quiet havoc in a knockout Hitchcock-style sequence set during a performance of Tosca. Along the way, the secret agent kills, maims, tosses the corpse of a friend into a dumpster and even kicks a corpse just for the fun of it, all en route to bringing down a fabulously wealthy, regime-toppling environmental terrorist (played with sly, heavy-lidded malice by Mathieu Almaric).

As directed by Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Stranger Than Fiction), Quantum of Solace gives us precious little old-school Bond escapism but instead a glum, sadistic, no-fun Bond for a dark, dangerous world and a post-Bourne movie audience. Muscled up, flinty-eyed and tight-jawed, Craig slips into Bond mode (and Tom Ford threads) like a second skin. Although the script by Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade provides Craig with two striking female companions (sultry Olga Kurylenko and perky Gemma Arterton), there’s next to no time for kiss-kiss in a movie preoccupied with bang-bang. Some of the action sequences are filmed so chaotically that, with all the pumped-up sound effects and flash, you can’t figure out exactly what’s going on, let alone why it’s going on. Still, the movie boasts a terrific title sequence (despite a droning title song by Alicia Keyes and Jack White) and it crackles with occasional flashes of sardonic wit, particularly when Bond locks horns with M, a role etched in acid by Judi Dench. Quantum of Solace doesn’t have the style, substance and brio of Casino Royale but it’s still a very good time at the movies. Now, if the next Bond could only revive the series’ fun and sex appeal, we’ll have definitely entered 007’s second golden era.

—Stephen Rebello