Latest 007 movie delivers an unfamiliar Bond

By The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Picking up moments after the end of "Casino Royale," "Quantum of Solace" feels more like an extended coda than another installment in the Bond canon, writes reviewer Philip Martin in Friday's MovieStyle section.

Movie

Quantum of Solace

85

Rating: PG-13

Length: 1 hour, 45 minutes

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Opening Friday, "Quantum of Solace" is the shortest (at 105 minutes) and most frenetically paced of the 22 Bond films. It's impressively taut, but mildly disappointing.

If you haven't seen or have forgotten the first film, a little review is in order: In "Casino Royale," Daniel Craig gives us a thuggish, brutally effective killer who yet has the capacity to love. By the end of the film, that spark of humanity is all but extinguished - Bond is bereft and confused, thinking his beloved Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) had betrayed him, then sacrificed herself to save him.

If "Casino Royale" is a tragic love story, "Quantum of Solace" is a revenge tale as a pitiless, globe-trotting Bond doggedly tracks down the people responsible for Vesper's death, almost incidentally unearthing a shadowy international conspiracy fronted by Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), an environmentalist entrepreneur who's plotting the overthrow of the Bolivian government.

But Greene's over-the-top plans - which will remind movie buffs of "Chinatown" - are one of the few Bond-like signifiers in the movie. This Bond not only doesn't wink at the camera, he's nearly humorless. There's no Q, no gadgets, and hardly any sex - although the one agent Bond does bed pays for her indulgence in a typically symbolic fashion. Instead, Bond has a chaste, deadly partnership with Camille (Olga Kurylenko), a Bolivian secret agent also motivated by vengeance-taking.

Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

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