I didn't like QoS AT ALL, but it had pretty much nothing to do with Daniel Craig or even his performance. FWIW, Daniel Craig did a spectacular follow-on to CR. It's easy now to see why the writers' strike hurt a little bit, but for the most part, he carried his own weight (although taking the cash out of Mathis' wallet was a flawed moment; even allowing for him to be thrown into a dumpster, it seems to jump out of character for a moment, and then fall right back in line). My problem is with most of the other characters.
Judi Dench for the most part did a great job with the material she was given...but the problem was that I think she was quite frankly given a little too much of that material. Likewise, in the opening, how did Mr. White escape while M is perfectly fine? The more times I've watched QoS, the less sense this makes. Seeing as this film was only 106 minutes long (I'm going to get back to this), would it really have been too much to ask for Dame Judi to have Mr. White crack her head (or that of a stunt double) against the C-pillar and then just disappear off camera after opening the car door?
Camille is also way too two-dimensional for me. For those that think I'm out of touch with modern Bond films, I thought Eva Green as Vesper Lynd was terrific. She was an extremely well-developed character that the film got us care about. The film didn't seem to have to try and foist her on us. We just accepted her as the Bond girl and it worked. This film TRIED to get us to care about Camille, but I just couldn't. Any time a film intentionally makes me try and care about a character (I realize this is sort of an intangible) to the point of bonking me over the head with it, it usually means that the character is lacking in something, be it acting ability, backstory, screentime, or an attempt to divert the plot. In Camille's case, what was lacking (big time) was backstory and character depth.
They even had her raped and I had difficulty caring about the character. As opposed to some film critics saying this was just shocking the audience, I've often wondered if this was a ploy to make the audience care more about Camille. A rape victim HAS to be cared about, right? In the real world, yes. But on screen? It depends on the way in which it's presented...in this case, it doesn't work for me personally. But to be honest, even this can be overlooked.
However, I've not yet addressed the three big problems of Quantum of Solace: the editing/camerawork, the weak villain, and (and I've not seen this one mentioned yet) the running time that SHOULD have been about 10-15 minutes longer. Why? I'll get back to it in a minute.
The editing and camerawork of QoS was probably its weakest point. Perhaps they should have fixed the wonky wheel on the dolly, do fewer hand-held shots, or invested in a camera tripod that cost more than $25 USD? The thing is, if this movie WERE a great film with a great plot, you could overlook this.
Believe it or not, my number one favorite James Bond film, From Russia With Love, had TERRIBLE editing. Seriously. Go back and watch the film and start counting the continutity errors. Since I'm best-known for my car-related posts, I'll gladly post some pretty egregious examples for cars alone: a '58 Dodge pickup turns into a '61 Chevy 1-Ton Stakebed Truck. A '61 Ford Ranch Wagon sprouts two extra doors and then loses them. The Citroen Traction 11BL is obviously three different cars (the one seen out the rear window in black with creme colored hubcaps, the one seen at the airport in midnight blue with no hubcaps, and the one Red Grant is driving in black with black hubcaps; you can also see differences in the grille designs). The Dodge Royal taxi that magically appears at both the airport and outside the Soviet Embassy (same license number). Heck, TWO Bonds were on screen for a split second! But none of that actually wrecked the film for me. The plot was just too strong. In QoS, the plot isn't strong enough to support that type of problem, which brings me to severe problem number two.
We often speak of films like (especially) The Man With the Golden Gun or License to Kill as being either made or broken by the characters around Bond, no matter who plays him. I'm convinced that the only reason a plurality of people really like TMWTGG is because of Moore vs. Christopher Lee. Face it: the film would have been horribly bad sans Lee's Francisco Scaramanga character.
Likewise, an already-good Bond film like LTK can be made even better with the addition of a good villian. Robert Davi's Franz Sanchez winds up more than making up for some rather serious gaps that Dalton (as much as I like his Bond) I don't think was capable of filling himself. LTK's plot was basically that of a generic '80's action flick and you really have to ask yourself "what would this film have been like if it hadn't been for a villain like Davi's Franz Sanchez?"
Instead, imagine Truman-Lodge...yep, Sanchez's annoying-as-heck accountant...as the main bad guy who occassionally gets orders from an unseen Sanchez. I give you Dominic Greene. As with Camille, the film tells us what Greene's doing more than it shows us. Except unlike Camille, you CAN illustrate what Greene's doing on-screen and give us a reason to really dislike him. Why would it be too hard, especially with all those special effects, to show some of Greene's goons suppressing rioting in the streets using automatic weapons because the people don't want to have to pay an outrageous sum of money for their water? How about more or less casually asking an accountant how much money he'll lose from the expected casualties? That would make him pretty sinister, especially showing him on the phone and ordering it.
But then again, it's also clear that Greene is a lackey. Yeah, I know, he belongs to Quantum and is by definition a lackey, but so were Dr. No, Kronsteen, Rosa Klebb, Red Grant, Emilio Largo, Fiona Volpe, Le Chiffre, etc. These villains were intimidating despite being lackeys for either SPECTRE or Quantum. Greene was...well...not. At best, he was Osato from YOLT. If this is what Marc Forster meant by giving the character a "pitiful" quality, then yes, he succeeded. His henchman Elvis is also pretty useless/at times seems like a sort of a knock-off of Vlad, the guy from Die Another Day (and when you seem to be re-using a character from one of the worst Bond films ever you, you know you've got problems).
Now onto the other villain: General Medrano. The guy seems directly out of central casting and somehow manages to hit every South American tinpot dictator stereotype in the book to the point of resembling the Cuban General from Red Dawn (who WAS, according to screenwriter John Milius, just that, a stereotype). Why not make him a little different? He rapes Camille, which is really more of a "shock" than an actual sinister character trait. Why not make the guy somewhat rebellious against Greene/make it obvious that once Greene gets him in power, he has his own ideas about Greene. Give him ambition as opposed to pure power lust. Make him capable of thinking outside the box. You combine this with the rape scene, and you have a terrifying villain as opposed to an un-funny, rape-capable version of Esposito from Woody Allen's Bananas.
And then there is my biggest criticism for this film: its running time. Wait, what, I just trashed everything else and the worst thing was the running time? Yes, and I'll explain why. Say this film was 120 minutes long. Just fourteen extra minutes. In that span of fourteen extra minutes, think of how much development could have gone into Greene's character or Camille's character. Think of how much easier the scenes could have transitioned. Think of what might have been. That was a big problem for me personally. The aspect of "what might have been".
There were also scenes like the aerial dogfight that, despite being a huge fan of vintage prop-driven aircraft, really didn't add much. Instead of having the DC-3 shot to bits (it's not as if the film would be short on action without it!), why not use the time to develop Camille as someone we can sympathize with, Greene as exponentially more sinister, or Medrano as something more than what Henry Rowland was to Germans in WWII more? Now combine this with my proposed fourteen extra minutes of footage. I reiterate, although this time as a question: what might have been?
I tend to be pretty harsh and demanding as reviewers go, although as mentioned, I do believe that Craig showed up enough to avoid making the film a total write-off. However, it's still in the lower-middle tier of Bond film for me. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I saw this as a regression from the true cinematic wonder that was Casino Royale. I'm hoping that with everyone's knowledge of a lackluster script and a Bond villain I know literally NO ONE outside of this message board liked or felt was sinister enough (something that is probably not lost on the writers), that we really get a proper film to complement CR in Skyfall.
Again, just my two cents and offering my perspective, which is that the film essentially did not go far enough in areas where we expect Bond films to go. You can of course take it or leave it.
Last edited by Dalkowski110 (12th Aug 2012 23:33)
By the way, are you gonna eat that?
) is terrific, the opera sequence is dynamic & I like Bond's final dealings with Dominic Greene. Shades of THE EIGER SANCTION. My main gripes were the style of film-making, shortness of running time & an indecypherable plot. If Forster had opted for a 'cleaner' camera/editing style & sat down with Michael Wilson instead of Daniel Craig to hammer out a coherent plotline, it may have worked a treat. The idea of Greene & co starving a country of its natural resources for financial gain is fine by me, but we don't have it presented in a clear-cut way. It's dismissed in a couple of quick sentences & Bond stumbling on it after his parachuting escapade.
