NATURALLY muscular, whereas the average Hollywood blockbuster is on human growth hormones, Bond (Daniel Craig) is back this week and thirsting to avenge the death of Vesper Lynd in the previous film. Quantum Of Solace picks up an hour after the end of Casino Royale and many shots are fired and many more things blow up when he uncovers a link between the woman he loved and a Spectre-ish cartel of shady businessmen who call themselves the Quantum, which sounds like the kind of dynamically empty corporate brand name the men choose for themselves in the opening episode of every series of The Apprentice.
Quantum's leader is the shark-eyed Mr Greene (Mathieu Almaric) who hides his nefarious plans behind an eco-friendly business conglomerate and has a sidekick who enjoys opera and has a pudding bowl haircut.
Don't henchman have time to look in the mirror? There's no time to fret about this in the terse, swift Quantum Of Solace. Bond barely has time for his usual kiss kiss alongside the bang bang. Instead there's some cross-gender Bonding with Camille (Olga Kurylenko), a pillow-lipped Bolivian on a revenge mission of her own, and a strengthening of the ties between Bond and M (Dame Judi Dench), the only woman who truly understands him, at least until she gets so cross that she takes away his credit card and deprives him of his licence to spend.
Quantum Of Solace isn't as astonishing as Casino Royale, which had an immediacy that took your breath away, although the pacing and the fighting are still as relentless as the Bourne pictures that provide a template for this rebooted 007. Yet unlike Casino Royale, the storytelling feels fractured and the character development has been muffled. The choppy style appears to be the result of some ferocious editing which has left subplots and payoffs on the cutting room floor. One minor instance is Gemma Arterton's Agent Fields, who refuses to tell Bond her first name. Thanks to a big pair of movie shears, you now have to wait until the credit roll to find out that it is Strawberry.
It is inevitable that Quantum has also yielded some of its ability to surprise us. Two years ago, we had a bit of squeak over Casino Royale's nod to Dr No, with Daniel Craig wading out of the ocean like a genetically-modified Ursula Andress. This time, when one of the Bond Girls comes to a sticky end in a way that pays tribute to Goldfinger, the scene feels like furniture.
Yet even in a flawed sequel like Quantum, we can all feel like we're getting what we want from Craig's 007, unless what you desire is Daniel Craig grinning. He may crack noses and ribs, but never a smile. A lot has been made of Craig's body since he revealed a set of turtle-shell abs in Casino Royale, but in Quantum Of Solace the camera allows itself to linger on what's above the neck. With his aqua eyes, jug ears and a rough, rocky countenance, Craig has a face only a parole officer could love but he may yet make parole officers of us all. After two movies' worth of running, jumping, and some electrifying hand-to-hand combat, Craig is the series' most physically skilled Bond – although I'd like to see him in a comedy soon, if only to confirm that he still has all his teeth.
Here he moves with feral elegance and allows a growing awareness of his work's lethal consequences for the innocent as well as the guilty to flicker briefly across that stony face.
Maybe Bond is still an action figure whose default setting is beating up bad guys, pulling out a gun and running across roofs. But if boys have to be boys, it's a huge relief to know the new Bond age is confident enough to keep them conflicted about it.
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