Daniel Craig returns in
QUANTUM OF SOLACE, wherein Bond seeks revenge for the death of Vesper Lynd from the last movie and finds himself squared against an environmentalist-capitalist seeking to monopolize the water resources of Bolivia
We continue making big bold brave choices in the Daniel Craig era. Look, I'm going to say this right out, my biggest complaint about Quantum of Solace is that it feels less like a Bond movie than anything that's gone before. Don't get me wrong - this is still a good movie - but I don't feel as though it's a particular good Bond movie. We get some of the clear hallmarks of the franchise. Bond up against a villain with a natural-resource based plot to make a ton of money - this feels pretty traditional. We have Craig as Bond, who I am still on the fence about, he's still stone faced and has Deep Emotional Trauma but I can't quite figure out what he's doing about it other than a lot of brooding. This movie also has chase scenes - a LOT of chase scenes. Good night, it's the shortest Bond movie (at just over an hour and 45 minutes) and yet they manage to squeeze a car chase, a boat chase, a plane chase, and at least two foot chases into this run time. 3/4 of this movie is Bond running from things. Which - knowing that the script was barely done when the Writers Strike happened and Craig and the director were having to make up some things as they go - extenuating circumstances, etc etc I suppose. But I mean also - does this film have ANY gadgets? I mean any? Other than fancy cell phone tracking? Look, I'm not saying we need Q and a whole slew of gadgets, but to have virtually nothing in this department is one of the reasons this feels like a great action/spy movie - but not a whole lot like a Bond movie.
They still pack in a lot of plot, confusingly at times, but enough so that the short run time still feels quite full. We get the return of the dot-dot-dot scene and a true gunbarrel sequence to END the movie (had this just not shown up at all I might have actually thrown this movie out with the bathwater). It's good, it's fine, but if I was really trying to highlight to someone what makes Bond Bond - this is the last movie I would show them.
Only one Bond Bonk here, we hit the 60 mark with 48 different women. Only three movies left!
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