The latest in the James Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace, continues the efforts of filmmakers to update the Bond image, presenting a darker, more brooding Bond rather than the suave wise cracking that has been the norm. Unfortunately, unlike Casino Royale, the first film for Daniel Craig as the new Bond, Quantum of Solace is a confused jumble of characters, action and plot (or lack thereof) and presents a Bond so cynical that it is hard to root for him.
The film partially takes off where Casino Royale left off. Bond is clearly a man with vengeance on his mind for the death of his beloved Vesper in the previous film. Bond is still after the secret society, which we learn in this film is called Quantum, that seems to control so much of the world's wealth and governments. The villain in this film is Dominic Greene, a business man who is part of the Quantum conspiracy. Greene trades on the world's desire of environmental sustainability (note the man's name) to present a front of a concerned businessman while he is busy buying up world resources and the governments that control them. Bond follows Greene around the world attempting to unmask the clandestine group and creating chaos as he goes. There is a lot of action (and death) in this movie. On the way he picks up "Bond girl" Camille who seeks revenge on the new dictator of Bolivia, a vicious general who killed her family years ago.
It doesn't make sense to describe the plot beyond this, as there really isn't one. The film features a confusing number of characters and venue changes that make it difficult to follow. Add to this the close photography even in the action sequences and it actually becomes hard to discern the action on the screen. I certainly would encourage reviewing Casino Royale before seeing Quantum to refresh your memory of certain facts and characters. I wish I had.
The new Bond is a post-national Bond in some ways, a kind of Bond for a globalized world. What we learn in this film is that all governments and corporations are essentially corrupt. This includes the Americans and the British. Corruption pervades all authority, including the Church in a clever filming of a scene at an opera, making defense of authority an absurdity. Thus the only thing worth fighting for is one's self. This Bond does not fight for Queen and country, but for revenge. Thus he is sympathetic to his colleague Camille, who only wants to kill the man who killed her family. This is so even though she concedes that her father, who was part of a previous Bolivian government, was a cruel man. He was a bad father, but he was hers. Thus love of one's own, very narrowly defined, trumps love of country or even love of justice.
One of the themes of the film is one never knows who one's friends and enemies are. It consciously sets us up to doubt everyone. This causes us to wonder why we should root for Bond. After all, why is his violence in service of himself any different than anyone else's? One never gets a sense that Bond is after Quantum because he wants to defend his country, or justice, or the people of the world, or anything noble.
To describe the new Bond, perhaps we can refer to a genre related to the spy story, the detective story. There are two basic detective types. There is the high society detective perhaps best exemplified by the William Powell/Myrna Loy team of Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man films. These are wealthy folks who do detective work because they would otherwise be bored. They do not question authority but rather seek to supplement it when it fails to produce justice. There is then the hard-boiled detective as depicted, for example, by Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. This detective consciously works outside the law, as the law is partially indicted in the corruption the detective investigates. The hard-boiled detective is outside the law, sometimes in opposition to the law, living in a much darker world than the Nick Charles's of the world.
Daniel Craig's James Bond partakes much more of the hard-boiled detective genre than the high society detective that Bond sometimes became in the hands of other directors and actors. But he goes beyond the Philip Marlowes. Even the hard-boiled detective, while sullied by the corruption that surrounds him, remains devoted to public order. In the hard-boiled story, there is a dark underworld that exists just below the surface of a seemingly benign and well ordered society. It's the detective's job to enter into this world, or perhaps emerge from it, in order to maintain the precarious tranquility of society. This sanguinary Bond kills for his good with little concern for who it relates to any kind of justice other than his own interest. In Quantum, Bond defies his government, becoming a rogue agent who is an authority unto himself.
There are some indications at the very end of the film that Bond is aware "who he works for." When M welcomes Bond "back" to the fold, he says he never left. Perhaps in coming films we will see him subsume his own sense of individual justice for a justice that defends his country. But even here we see Bond succumbing to a tyrannical temptation, believing that he was better able to do justice on his own, including the private use of lethal force, than those with proper authority to use deadly force. While Bond is "licensed to kill," that comes with certain responsibilities and restrictions. This Bond is only restricted by what he himself decides is necessary.
Quantum of Solace is both a jumbled mess of a film and a vision of a cynical world where justice is what we say it is. We just hope that Bond chooses to spare the rest of us from his sense of revenge.
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