So in between all the holiday madness and shopping, Wheezley and I managed to see Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond flick. (For those of you who don’t know, I’m a huge Bond fangirl.)
The movie picks up an hour after the close of Casino Royale, with Bond taking the evil Mr. White to M to be interrogated about the organization that White works for (the group was responsible for Vesper, Bond’s lover, killing herself in CR, among other things). But White escapes, and it’s up to Bond to track down the members of Quantum (that’s the group’s name) and stop them from taking over a country in South America (among other things). Along the way, Bond meets Camille, a mysterious beauty who wants to kill the evil general who murdered her family years ago.
I have to say I was a little disappointed by Quantum. But then again, I expected to be. Casino Royale was such a great reinvention of the franchise, I knew it would be hard to follow that with another fantastic movie. That being said, Quantum was pretty solid.
Daniel Craig was fabulous as Bond once again, and his scenes with M were especially good. This is basically a vengeance movie, and Craig managed to be angry, devastated by Vesper’s death, and grieving all at the same time — and still pull off a throwaway bit of Bond charm every once in a while. Judi Dench was also excellent.
But the villian was pretty vanilla. One thing I would like to see in the Bond movies is a villain who can go toe-to-toe with Bond physically. One of the things that made Goldeneye so good was that Sean Bean and Pierce Brosnan had a knock-down, drag-out fight scene at the end. I’d love to see somebody like Gerard Butler cast as the next Bond villain. Can’t you just imagine the kind of fight scene he and Craig could put on? :cool:
As with any Bond movie, there are lots of exotic locations, globe-trotting, and beautiful people in beautiful clothes. Also, there were some nice fight sequences, especially at the beginning of the movie. Â
So overall, thumbs up. A good Bond movie, but not as great as Casino Royale.
What about you guys? Anyone seen any good movies lately? I’ve been thinking about going to see Australia too. Share in the comments.
I’m waiting for them to bring back Major Boothroyd of the quartermaster branch . . . or at least his successor.
I don’t know that Q and his gadgets fit in with the current, gritty incarnation of Bond. They could do it, I suppose, but Q would have to talk to Bond about guns or knives or some other down-to-earth gadget. Not say, an invisible car (which was one of the worst Bond gadgets ever).
But really, Desmond Llewellyn will always be Q to me. He was the perfect blend of cheery exasperation at Bond always breaking his gadgets. I don’t know who they could get to fill his shoes.
I thought John Cleese was an interesting choice. Or I suppose they could always go with John DeLancie.
I would rather have the gadgets over the grit anytime. The gadgets are what make the Bond movies fun to watch.
I thought Cleese did a good job as Q’s assistant. I like most of the gadgets, but some of them are a little cheesy (like the aforementioned invisible car).
Probably won’t be going to see any movies this holiday season, unless we break down and take the kids to something, but we hope to receive many DVDs of superhero movies for holiday gifts!
Like Iron Man, perhaps? I still need to see that one. And Dark Knight too … :batman: