QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Written by Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade
Directed by Marc Forster
Starring Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright and Judi Dench


M: Bond, if you could avoid killing every possible lead, it would be deeply appreciated.”

When we last left James Bond (Daniel Craig), he had just found out that the first woman he ever gave his heart to had betrayed him. You do not get James Bond to feel something and then walk all over that newfound vulnerability. You just don’t do that and, if you knew how hard it was for this particular brand of man to get there to begin with, you couldn’t do it with any good conscious. When we last left James Bond, he also reinvigorated a franchise that wasn’t in any actual serious danger of disappearing. Impressive, yes, but that is what James Bond does after all; he impresses with every fiber of his perfectly sculpted being. The trouble is there is only so high you can get and Craig’s first outing as Bond, CASINO ROYALE, was not just impressive, it made me a believer in a character that has meant very little to me over the decades. So where does the first Bond sequel, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, go from there? Not very much further it seems. Apparently, the best hands were played in the last game.


I don’t mean to make it sound horrible; it’s just disappointing. QUANTUM OF SOLACE lacks the boundless, unexpected energy of CASINO ROYALE. This isn’t for lack of trying. The action starts to move before you even have a chance to get comfortable with a high-speed car chase through the scenic Italian seaside. Then the action continues through underground tunnels, massive crowds, across rooftops, down scaffolding and through panes of glass while fighting in mid air and hanging from ropes. I didn’t say it lacked in actual action. It’s just that this particular action isn’t as exciting or original as what we’ve already seen. Sure a boat chase that plays out like bumper cars in the water – with guns! – is exhilarating but it isn’t as bracing as a two-man chase through a construction site, leading up to a fist fight 200 feet in the air on a narrow crane. Instead, every scenario Bond finds himself in seems facile and there is never any real question as to how it will play out. The caliber of stunt is much more Jason Bourne than James Bond. At one point, I half expected Matt Damon to show up running alongside him on the rooftops of Port au Prince.

While the action is still gripping, if somewhat less original, it is the story that is most thin in QUANTUM OF SOLACE. Oscar winner, Paul Haggis, had to turn his script in before the writer’s strike began last year to make sure that production would not be delayed. The result is rushed, expectedly. Themes like trust, truth and vengeance are tossed around as concepts but never solidified as concrete dilemmas in the characters’ lives. And while one doesn’t necessarily go to a James Bond film for depth, one does expect a certain complexity to the plot. In what is the shortest Bond film ever made, Bond’s motivation is restricted to tracking down a mysterious terrorist group called Quantum. He must find out who and where they are and their eco-terrorist plot seems secondary to that. Bond must also contend with another vengeful force, Camille (a gorgeous and commanding, Olga Kurylenko), who is out to avenge her family. Could it be that she has come in to Bond’s life to show him the reality of holding on to a need for revenge for so many years? Probably but it doesn’t seem to have any effect on him at the end of the day.


I have a love/hate relationship with director, Marc Forster (love FINDING NEVERLAND and STRANGER THAN FICTION, hate STAY and THE KITE RUNNER) and was certainly skeptical when I heard he was coming on to direct this 22nd Bond film. He had never done any film this size and this explosive in his career but there are teams of people around on big budget pics like this to make sure that all the action comes off as it should. Forster was brought on for his storytelling abilities. This is fine logic but there is barely any story to tell here and he can’t be faulted for having little to work with any more than the screenwriters can be faulted for having to get something in before going on strike. QUANTUM OF SOLACE certainly falls closer to the love side of my relationship with Forster than the hate side but more time needs to be taken with the next Bond – give Craig the time to do what he did first time out and show us the man behind the wheel of the Aston Martin. You can’t just grab whatever you have behind the bar and slap a martini together in no time, expecting Bond to drink it. He would simply send it back and demand you make it again.

DVD Review: CASINO ROYALE

Written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis
Directed by Martin Campbell
Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelson, Jeffrey Wright and Judi Dench


M: I knew it was too early to promote you.
James Bond: Well, I understand double 0’s have a very short life expectancy so your mistake will be short-lived.

Nothing I am about to say will be news to the legions of existing Bond fans around the world. For the rest of you Bond neophytes, of which I also consider myself a member, it may interest you to know that CASINO ROYALE, the 2006 official relaunch of the decades-old franchise, had been made already twice before. The first incarnation, made before the franchise was unleashed, was a live CBS television production. It was later made in 1967 as a spy spoof starring Peter Sellers. This meant that Bond creator, Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel had truly never been made the way it was intended for a theatrical audience. For years, the rights to the script were buried beneath so much paperwork that it was a miracle the lawyers were able to free it up to be made in 2006. At this point, the Bond series was at a financial high point but there was concern the icon had staled some. Clearly, Bond wasn’t going away but something needed to be done. The decision was a risky one. The decision was to start at the beginning and introduce the world to a new Bond for a new day. The risk paid off.


CASINO ROYALE is an introduction to a new Bond and to a new man behind the tux, Daniel Craig. Fanatics were skeptical; after all, the man is blond and has clear, blue eyes. Craig brings a ruggedness and real grit to Bond like we have not seen before. Craig’s Bond is still smooth and confident but he is also vulnerable and capable of feeling something. Craig is also hyper sexualized as Bond. The way he wears his pants, the way he walks out of the ocean, water dripping down his perfect chest – these kinds of images have always been reserved for the infamous Bond girls. While the ladies are still lovely, Bond now has something for everyone. The men will still want to be him – order the same martini, drive the same Aston Martin – and the women will still swoon over him, only now, Bond earns it. This franchise dates back to the 60’s but it only now seems to have figured out how to broaden its appeal to universal levels.


On the eve of the first Bond sequel in history, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, CASINO ROYALE has been re-released as a special edition on DVD and Blu-Ray. This edition is a much more complete package, containing over a dozen special features, when the original edition only contained four. For such an intensely action packed film though, the features rarely reach the same heights of excitement. First off, and I can’t solely hold the people behind this release responsible for this, but marketing people need to stop naming features randomly without detailing what it actually is. To find the behind the scenes on this film, I had to randomly select features and wait to see what they would hold. What they did hold was quite a bit of understated explanation about legal rights and Bond throughout history and unfortunately, not enough about how director, Martin Campbell, managed some of the most energetic action sequences in recent history. It may make for fascinating material for hardcore Bond followers but it gets tedious for those of us specifically interested in this particular film.


I may have expected the unbridled vigor of the film to translate more to the features and commentary but CASINO ROYALE has enough wallop on its own to make up for any disappointment. It is no small feat to invigorate a decades old franchise and to make an excellent film that just happens to be a Bond film is equally impressive, if not more so. Bond may have never left but it feels like he just arrived.

FILM


BD

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH

Written and Directed by Paul Haggis


Soldier: Before I went, I would never say this, but if you ask me now, I’d say we just nuke ‘em all and watch it all turn back to dust.”

Before going to Iraq, a soldier would not likely even think this, let alone say it out loud in any serious manner. The times have changed though and eyes have seen more than any one pair should. Take Jo Anne’s husband for instance. He’s just returned from Iraq to Fort Rudd, New Mexico, a town built around its army base. You might think this would make Jo Anne very happy but, much to her dismay, this is just not the case. Instead, she doesn’t feel she still knows this changed man. When she goes to the police after he snaps a dog’s neck as punishment for biting, no one listens. Instead, they snicker at her. She is enraged but her anger is not enough to rattle any one out of their apathetic trance. Despite there being a clear need for Jo Anne’s husband to get help, there just isn’t anything to be done. He’s just another returning soldier whose mental stability has been fried under the Iraq sun. This is the side of America that is not often seen – a population exhausted by the weight of the war, be that by supporting it or questioning it or participating in it. And while the fighting is taking place overseas, writer/director Paul Haggis’ IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH aims to show America’s eyes what’s been happening in their homes while their focus was elsewhere.

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH is Haggis’s first time directing since his Best Picture winning CRASH. In the time since then, he has gone on to work on the screenplays for CASINO ROYALE and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA. The experience seems to have taught him some valuable lessons about subtlety. While CRASH was intense and moving, it was also contrived and convenient. The pay off may have been worth the trouble but concessions were made for the bigger emotional impact. IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH does not resort to gimmicks to make its mark. Instead, the events unfold like any good mystery, where the pieces come together to reveal that what you’ve been trying to figure out all along is really just a fraction of what’s really going on. This particular mystery begins when Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) gets a call from the Fort Deer army base, informing him that his son has gone missing after returning from active duty. Hank has no helpful information as he didn’t even know his son had come back. It becomes clear pretty quickly that something foul has happened and that Hank didn’t know his son very well at all. Yet as he gets to know his son through the clues he comes across while searching for him, Hank realizes that he knows just as little about how the army has changed as he does his son.


IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH is able to make understated commentary about the mental and emotional burden of the Iraq war thanks mostly to Haggis’ direction of his stars, Jones and Charlize Theron. Theron is a single mother and a detective who struggles daily to prove that a woman can make just as good a detective as her sloppy male counterparts. She braves the testosterone that beats down on her from all sides but it is Deerfield’s arrival that shows her how fighting against oppression is taking away from her work. Jones achieves a similar effect on Theron’s performance. He is so strong, so internally tormented and still so unfaltering despite the overwhelming evidence that is chipping away at his impression of his great American hero of a son, that Theron cannot help but step up her game as an actress to avoid looking bland in front of the veteran. As Deerfield, Jones is the silent, proud father and husband. He’s the kind of man who cannot be around a lady while simply wearing an undershirt. He is an old-fashioned army boy in a world where he can watch unscrambled video image from a digital camera his son carried with him in Iraq. All the seedy revelations he is discovering must be made proper again and resolving his two conflicting minds becomes the challenge he needs to overcome in order to find both his son and his peace of mind. Jones is not just up for this challenge; he owns it.


With its simple tone and steady pace, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH laments the loss of America’s blanketed support and gusto for a war that was meant to protect their way of life and freedom. It is not so much a movie designed to criticize the decision to go to war in the first place. Haggis is too smart to give that tired argument. Instead, it is an expression of grief for the damage the war has weathered on the country, its citizens and the principals that it was initially meant to protect.