Monday, Nov. 17, 2008

Craig era as Bond back on track in 'Quantam of Solace'

By Edward Robertson, atomictown.com

Revenge, as the French say, is a dish best served to those low-class Normandy-stealing hooligans to the north.

I may have mixed that up. Whatever the case, I have a pet theory that man's inability to come to grips with a chaotic existence first started when we took vengeance (or "justice," as some call it) out of our hands and into the hands of the law, which rarely smites our foes hard enough to undo whatever wrongs they've visited upon us. When was the last time a court brought a murder victim back to life? Like 1992? Yet they're the first to cry foul when you hunt down and string up the dude who called you "Porky" back in fourth grade.

That's why vigilantes such as Batman and the James Bond of Quantum of Solace are so endlessly cool. They point the way to a brighter tomorrow, a world without police or juries where every man's private moral code is as valid as the Ten Commandments. As a gun-owning martial artist who feels personally slighted by everything from bad weather to girls who don't smile back, that world can't come soon enough.

In Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig's lover may be dead, but the group that employed her is everywhere -- including in MI6. When an embedded traitor springs their prisoner and only lead on the mysterious group, Craig follows the money trail to Haiti, where environmentalist Mathieu Amalric is arranging to overthrow the Bolivian government in exchange for a potentially oil-rich desert.

With Craig carelessly killing every lead he finds -- and Amalric's CIA buddies looking to secure a slice of the new Bolivian oil fields -- boss Judy Dench is pressured to pull Craig off the investigation.

Without British support, Craig goes rogue and makes his own way to Bolivia. Dench wants him recalled. The CIA wants him dead. All Craig wants is vengeance.

One of the cool things about Casino Royale, Craig's first go as Bond, was how it took the franchise back down to earth. There were no men with lethal hats or Death Star satellites; when Craig got hit, he leaked a viscous red fluid we mortals call "blood."

For better or worse, Quantum of Solace is a step away from Bourne and back to Bond. Craig, who's apparently got Winston Churchill's greatest hits bumping on his iPod, blows things up by land, air, and sea, while director Marc Forster walks a fine line between realism and a nonstop series of ridiculous beatdowns across so many countries you'd need an atlas spread across your lap to keep up.

As the action's gotten less believable (though gripping and well-shot), the politics have moved closer to plausibility. On the Super Villain Scale -- where 1 is a plot to swap your husband's coffee for Folgers crystals and see if he notices and 10 is a plot to nuke the sun into sentience, convince it to start shining madness-rays, and harvest the ensuing ultra-corn into an unstoppable scarecrow army -- Amalric's scheme only rates about a 4. It's dastardly, but it's sane enough to conceivably work. Wait, what am I saying? The CIA mucking around with amoral coups in South American nations? What kind of cuckoo-crazy sci-fi universe is this?

This real-world shadiness and Craig's submerged rage fill in the gaps for a movie that's quick-paced and viscerally exciting but which sometimes feels too familiar -- not in its specifics, but in the way it just seems an awful lot like a Bond movie.

That's a small disappointment for those of us who liked the fresh break Casino Royale seemed to indicate for the series. There's a reason, though, the Bond formula -- jet-setting infiltration spiked by breathless action -- is by now so thoroughly established: when well-executed, it makes for a brisk mystery and a lot of things going boom. With its unusually pointed politics and a Bond who keeps a human edge through all his ruthless efficiency, Quantum of Solace keeps the Craig Era on the right track.

Grade: B+