Movie Review – Quantum of Solace
By Skip Tucker
At 106 minutes, “Quantum of Solace” is the shortest of all the Bond films. But because of the sloppy directing, editing and acting, this movie seems longer than “The English Patient.”
I love James Bond. Ever since Sean Connery left behind the sappiness of “Darby O’Gill and the Little People,” I’ve been hooked. Roger Moore didn’t have the charisma, but he had style. (David Niven doesn’t count.) I met George Lazenby on a plane once, and I thought he was severely underrated in his single outing as 007. Piers Brosnan was also up to the task (plus, he got to play tonsil hockey with Halle Berry). I had high hopes for newcomer Daniel Craig, and was fairly impressed with his first shot in “Casino Royale.” But in Solace, the first of the Bond series that’s a direct sequel, Craig plays Bond like a robot: untiring, inhuman, humorless and ultimately bland.
Instead of centering around a megalomaniacal evil genius hell-bent on taking over the world, the bad guy here is Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a faux environmentalist who’s trying to steal the water from a Bolivian desert with the help of an overweight deposed dictator and a bodyguard who laughingly looks like he couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag.
Quantum is about as close to unwatchable as you can get. It’s irritatingly confusing, with most action sequences involving needless, clumsy cutaways. The opera shootout scene was the worst, leaving you scratching your head and thinking, “What the hell just happened?”
It was ear-splittingly loud, too - although that might’ve just been the theater. (I have a theory on that. I think the theater purposely turned up the volume so the audience members couldn’t hear everybody else complaining about how hard this movie sucked.)
Since it was opening weekend, people were lining up to get in for the next showing as we were exiting the theater. Several people around me were complaining and expressing their disappointment to this tangled mess, to the obvious chagrin of some of those waiting to get in. I don’t usually want to spoil it for people who’ve shelled out for inflated ticket prices, but this movie leaves you with an almost overwhelming compulsion to scream, “Save your money! Save yourselves! Run for your lives!”
Bottom line – pew. This movie stunk out loud. Save your money. Save yourselves. Run for your lives.
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