Review: Quantum of Solace

I read several reviews before seeing this movie that equated this Bond with a sad attempt to imitate the Bourne movies. Gone were the gadgets, the women, the sophistication. Instead, insisted the reviews, the new movie was non-stop fighting, with a thin plot surrounding what was essentially an action film.

Well, I have seen this movie, and this is the best Bond movie to date, period. The reboot of the Bond franchise in Casino Royale was interesting and necessary to keep Bond relevant, but far more important is that it has led to this movie, Quantum of Solace, which opens up the path to a truly revolutionary type of Bond film. For the first time ever, a Bond film has put social and environmental issues front and center. For the first time, the machinations that Bond's villains perform have an impact on average people and the filmmakers have chosen to make that a central part of the film, not just a throw-away.

One of the staples of any Bond film is the numerous foreign locales that Bond travels through during his missions. This movie is no different, with stops in Italy, Haiti, Bolivia, Austria, and of course London, England. But for the first time, each place is not filmed to show the exotic-ness of the locale, not photographed to make a nice tourist pitch on behalf of the nation. Instead, in places where there is suffering, the movie shows that suffering. In Haiti and Bolivia, the constant turnover in governments has resulted in poverty for much of the population, and the movie does not attempt to hide any of it, but instead points it out visually, time and time again. The photography does not make the walls colorful and the hanging linens cheerful, but instead makes them drab and dingy.

Without giving too much away, the plot of Quantum of Solace is about how both private and government entities manipulate power in order to gain more resources and money. Quantum of Solace is hardly the first Bond movie in which this occurs, but it is the first one to actually depict the suffering of people who ultimately pay the price for this power grab. Perhaps it is done with a slightly heavy hand, but what Bond film has ever attempted more than a half-hearted attempt to show how the actions of villains cause suffering on the innocent? In this way, Quantum of Solace has shown the way to a new type of Bond film, one with an actual social message, less concerned with the cat-and-mouse game between government spies than with how this game ends up hurting the very people whose governments ostensibly protect.

The fact that so many reviewers have come out of this Bond film thinking that it is nothing but non-stop action when in reality it is the first one with a real social message is a testament to the deft hand of the filmmakers in embedding this message as a subtle undertone to the movie. This achievement was accomplished through the use of visual cues to accomplish the social message, rather than heavy bouts of dialogue and exposition.

Another milestone achieved by the filmmakers in this Bond film is their use of external elements to add artistic touches to the film in way that no other Bond film has really attempted. The first is most obvious, when a woman ends up dead, naked on a bed, covered in black oil. The reference back to Goldfinger is clear, but the deeper message hidden in that reference is quite astonishing for a Bond film. In Goldfinger, the woman who ends up dead is covered in gold, not oil. The plot of Goldfinger involves an attempt to corner the market on gold, because in the late 50's and early 60's, the most precious commodity in the world was gold. But in today's world, oil has replaced gold as the most precious commodity. Wars are no longer started over control of gold, instead it is oil that is driving greed, aggression, and ultimately suffering (in the immediate sense for the dead woman, but in the more metaphysical sense for all of humanity).

The second is far less likely to be noticed by anyone who is not a fan of opera, but an entire fight sequence is choreographed to the scene in Puccini's Tosca where Tosca kills Scarpia. The visuals of the Bond fight are interspersed with images of Tosca stabbing Scarpia. While it's debatable whether the scene works (for those who even understood it), for the filmmakers to try something like that in a Bond film is quite astonishing. As sophisticated as previous films have portrayed Bond, the films themselves have rarely been made with such sophistication.

So while many might bemoan the lack of sophistication evinced by Bond, and others might decry the dearth of fun gadgets for Bond to play with, I am quite happy to see that this film has pushed Bond in quite a new and interesting direction. Many considered Casino Royale's reboot of the Bond franchise to reflect a more "throw-back" Bond, one less reliant on gadgets and more brute force. How ironic then that Quantum of Solace gives us perhaps the most modern Bond of all, one who is concerned with society and humanity, who fights villains not just because his government tells him to, but because it is the right thing to do. That is far more than Jason Bourne ever did.