Wednesday 5 November 2008

Quantum Of Solace

I thought I'd wait a day or two after seeing Quantum of Solace before reviewing
it, because I was fairly certain I wasn't going to remember many details about
it. This has proved to be the case. Overall impression is that James Bond is a
bit pissed off after Casino Royale, and so embarks on a bit of a paperchase
across the world in search of the person he deems responsible. In passing, he
uncovers an international criminal conspiricy so bland that even he doesn't
really much care about them. The most interesting thing about them, I thought,
was that they were run by Jay Kay from Jamiroquai. I thought wrong, the credits
say that they were run by someone who looked a bit like Jay Kay from
Jamiroquai. In any case, all James is really looking for the whole time is five
minutes of quality alone time with Jay Kay's stunt double, in order to slap him
around a bit.

This is, effectively, Daniel Craig's remake of "Licence To Kill", in which Bond
goes off on one, in pursuit of someone basically uninteresting who's pissed him
off. And let's face it, "Licence To Kill" wins the "Most Shit Bond Film Not
Involving Roger Moore" award.

Having said that, it was kind of *alright*. I quite like the fact that these
days a Bond gadget is a mobile that does a tiny bit more than a mobile really
can; back in the heyday of Connery, the gadgets were things that they tried to
pitch a bit ahead of what's possible, but within what's plausible. The Bond
girls, I approved of, I've always liked them to be in the "Foxy Member of the
[country] Secret Service" mould. All we were really missing was an absurd plot
by a fiendish bad guy. Unfortunately, that's an element that we really can't do
without.