Film Review: Quantum of Solace (2008)Latest in the James Bond Series Misses the Mark, and Then Some
Superficial writing and clumsy filmmaking make for squandered potential in the latest James Bond entry. 1.5 stars out of 4.
So often does the bad accompany the good in life, perhaps out of necessity, so that we may truly appreciate the latter. After the ravishing James Bond reboot Casino Royale – arguably the best in the series – it would appear inevitable that the next film ratchet things down a few notches; a cynical view, yes, but one reinforced by the dearth of sequels that rise to the occasion presented before them (Empire Strikes Back, Before Sunset, and The Godfather, Part II notwithstanding). Quantum of Solace isn't completely disposable, but any box office gold it accrues will be purely incidental. That it wastes one of the best titles the series has yet seen doesn't begin to cover its offenses. A Fall from GraceTo say that sequels are doomed to failure is naïve, but with art house hack Marc Forster at the helm, that the follow-up to Royale turned out to be one of the worst of the series seems more like destiny manifest. Hype indicated that this might be the first Bond film with Oscar potential, yet in attempting to appeal to the "legitimate", often hollow standards of the awards brigade, it forgot what made the stylistically expressive Royale tick so furiously. Daniel Craig – by far the best performer the character has yet seen (no offense to Mr. Connery) – was largely responsible for this in his Oscar-robbed performance, yet even he can only pull so much weight with a script as thematically skimpy and a film so clunky in its assembly as Quantum. Like air escaping a punctured balloon, his effort goes to waste, nothing short of a criminal offense. Not unlike an old man relying on his cane for support, Quantum leans on the dramatic/thematic weight of its predecessor as a means to justify its own existence, routinely looking back in lieu of forging its own pulse. Once a slow-burning ember of self-immolating emotion and energy, Craig's Bond has been offensively reduced to the 007 equivalent of a sulking teenager, and it’s to the actor's enduring credit that as much emotion makes it to the screen as possible. Manufactured IncompetenceSquandered from the opening, borderline-incoherent car chase onward, the film screams not only of screenwriter Paul Haggis's contrived modes of exposition (popularized by the rank and overrated Crash), but Forster's unimaginative approach to filmmaking. From his own surface-deep take on the Peter Pan mythos in Finding Neverland to the outright disastrous The Kite Runner, he’s long been a filmmaker who prefers telling over showing, forgoing poetic expression for banal seriousness seemingly made with award show compilations chiefly in mind. When the accomplished Martin Campbell – director not only of Royale, but also the 1995 semi-reboot GoldenEye – was not named director of Quantum, many wondered aloud, with an appropriately dumbfounded slap to the head, why? Forster drops the torch that was passed to him, and chief among his failures is a dearth of genuine visual continuity: something preferable for any motion picture, and a must for action. Clueless is the only way to effectively describe the compilations of shaky medium and close-up shots that pose as action scenes; failing to establish/maintain any sense of the spatial relationship between the hunter and hunted, they instead play out as motion sans progression, like a videogame with respawning opponents and an unlimited ammo count. Inept to the point of neutering all interest in plot, Quantum may be the lousiest entry since 1975's Man with the Golden Gun. This time around, Bond's biggest adversaries are those behind the camera.
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