So I hear that some new Bond movie came out today… Despite the protestations of the boy inside me, I will not be going to see it, especially not with reviews like this:
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Too concerned with thrilling and wowing its audience with uncontrolled chaotic-ness, Marc Forster’s “Quantum of Solace” may eschew traditional Bond tropes like his favorite corny tag-line and beloved fan characters like Moneypenny, but the blockbuster embraces the hollow and emptiness of that made most discerning audiences abandon this series more than a decade ago.
Perhaps trying to prove himself Forster goes for kick and thrill while mostly forsaking the emotional notes that made “Casino Royale” so disarmingly good. Even the post ‘Bourne’ action sequences seem rote and phoned in – haven’t we seen this before? Is he really fighting with a book in close quarters and jumping from veranda to veranda? The opening car-chase is meant to rip you right into the action – the flurry of messy camera and artless whirling chaos just made us ill.
Bond producers may have explicitly hired Forster for his emotional and dramatic strengths (“Finding Neverland,” “Monsters Ball”), but to use where exactly? In those three key (and requisitely contrived) moments that last all of 30 seconds each? It doesn’t help that Daniel Craig’s 007 is carved out of ice, so there won’t be crying let alone even getting angry for a second.
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‘Solace’ is the bland Bond from the Roger Moore era with a touch of grit and ouch-that-hurt! Bourne style realistic action, but never does it feel alive, frenetic and charged as those winning action films. Instead it feels like what ‘Casino’ should have, but transcended thanks to a good story, soul and inventiveness – a lazy Hollywood-style Bourne-style ripoff. It lacks any heart and puts the franchise squarely back in the disposable and pointless movie jail where its lived for so long now. Bring back Martin Campbell and Paul Haggis (in full) or just throw this series back into the McDonald’s world of movies we can’t be bothered with. This thing my be burning up the box-office overseas (and likely Stateside too), but make no mistake, this is the same tripe of yore with a dirty, “gritty” sheen to try and fool you.
So, basically, they threw out everything except the stuff I hated about the new Casino Royale, and made a movie with just that.
Wonderful.
I disagree with the author that Casino Royale had any redeeming factors whatsoever, however, if he/she/it vaguely enjoyed CR, but intensely disliked the new one, something tells me I should not touch it with a twenty-foot, non-conductive, shielded, inert, non-reactive pole. Even if that pole just happened to be tipped with a 50,000-volt taser I could tag Daniel Craig with…
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