Going ballistic

Latest 007 film delivers an unfamiliar Bond

By Philip Martin

LITTLE ROCK — Quantum of Solace

85Cast: Daniel Craig, Ma

thieu Amalric, Olga

Kurylenko, Judi

Dench

Director: Marc

Forster

Rating: PG-13 for

violence, action,

sexual content

Running time: 105

minutes

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 - both the shortest (at 105 minutes) and most frenetically paced of the 22 Bond films, it's impressively taut and mildly disappointing.

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More information

If you haven't seen or have forgotten the first film, a little review is in order: In Casino Royale Bond is Bourne again as Daniel Craig, who 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, globetrotting 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 (OlgaKurylenko), a Bolivian secret agent also motivated by vengeance-taking.

OK, we get it. Craig's Bond hasn't yet become the Bond five of his predecessors played. He's Bond inchoate, all anger and id, and Craig portrays him like a bullet ricocheting through a cast-iron forest. Maybe in the next film, Craig has said, there'll be a submarine base.

But a movie ought to do more than serve as a trailer for the next film in the pipeline, and while some of us might cherish our more adult and naturalistic Bond, the fans who wonder why they didn't just call this character something else have a point.Craig's portrayal may very well be closer to the spirit of Ian Fleming's 007 than any other movie Bond, but the 20 movies before Casino Royale count for something - they establish an archetype that quite a few people enjoy. It's understandable that they might resent this no-fun version.

Craig is the best actor ever to play Bond, but Quantum of Solace is all zip and clang, a lot of noise and smoke. It's adeptly if somewhat disinterestedly directed by Marc Forster (who reportedly left a lot of the action sequences in the hands of second unit director Dan Bradley, who worked on the last twoBourne films).

Quantum is designed as a bridge to take us from the original story of the rebooted series to whatever adventures lie ahead. It feels like a necessary but minor chapter, one in which loose ends are tied up and accounts are reconciled. Bond has been broken and something cool and malevolent has appeared in his eyes. Our monster has been made but he's not finished. He's still rough. It could be interesting to see how - or whether - he acquires the insouciant glamour of Bond, James Bond.

MovieStyle, Pages 41, 46 on 11/14/2008