journal features

movie review - Quantum of Solace

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2008.12.03

First, a note on what this movie is or is not "for the franchise". I've heard a lot of complaints about this movie. That it's "no longer bond". That the old magic is gone.

I disagree. I thought it was a modernized telling of a very different world. No longer would I be interested in more of the 50's-80's style Bond with his Playboy magazine kind of hammy schmoozing and womanizing. Bond is supposed to be a 'black operations' agent in a very turbulent and violent world, not some frivolous twit cruising the world on a limitless trust fund.

I approve of what they've done with the franchise.

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As for this flick itself, I found its constant focus on action worked. Yes, the pace is unrelenting, but it's really a second part to the previous Bond flick and as such there isn't really a reason to be spend a lot of time on bringing the viewer up to speed on what's been happening. They should already know. The opening scene has Bond motoring at breakneck speed through a European countryside while fleeing unnamed antagonists only to arrive at his destination to reveal that he's had a prisoner in his trunk the entire time. It sets the tone and that tone stays with us throughout.

I recommend this film to fans of the Bourne Identity trilogy.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)