They Don't Know Who Their Friends Are

Yes, James Blond (Daniel Craig) is back, and he’s learned a thing or two. (Hopefully, he’ll learn things number three and four in time for the next movie.)

Casino Royale started out with a ridiculously overdone action sequence barely related to the plot, only to develop a recognizable Bond spirit in fits and Bonds, um, bounds. Quantum of Solace, on the other hand, begins with action sequences very well integrated into the plot.

Of course, the cliffhanger ending of Casino Royale goes a long way to that end. This time around, there’s a lot more plot to go around by the time Bond bursts onto the silver screen.

At first, there’s the obligatory and, as usual, well choreographed car chase, the villains after Bond making his run with Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) in the trunk. Next, Mr. White’s confederates rescue him when Bond, M (Judi Dench), and the other government goons are about to torture him. (Whether that’s meant to be a comment on today’s government-sponsored torture is anybody’s guess.) A breakneck chase from the sewers of Siena to the roofs over the town ensues.

The usual clues lead Bond to shady industrialist Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) and his girlfriend, Camille (Olga Kurylenko). The latter, it transpires, is on a quest to avenge her family, murdered by Greene’s partner, General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio).

Yet, while the body of the Bond franchise has been lifted, its soul keeps withering.

Olga Kurylenko and Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace

A running gag in the movie is Bond willy-nilly killing almost everyone he meets. Craig takes his role of the stone-cold killer to ridiculous extremes, that is, to one extreme: for the duration of the movie, he’s stone-faced as a cigar store Indian.

The times he smiles or otherwise moves one or two facial muscles can be counted on one hand. And if he’s supposed to be mourning and avenging Vesper Lynd, “the love of his life” — Craig gets those emotions across as well as a lead-lined refrigerator would.

Back in the day, critics derided Roger Moore’s sardonically arched eyebrow, declaring it to be playing Bond without any input from any other part of Moore’s body. Ah, those were the days.

Maybe Moore’s brow was not that much more of an acting achievement, but at least something moved in his face during a movie. I mean, it’s a movie, for crying out loud.

Judging by their performance in Quantum of Solace, neither Craig nor Dench could act their way out of a wet paper bag with pre-perforated escape hatches. Dench, and/or director Marc Forster seem to believe the way to convey an aggressive M persona is having her determinedly stride from office to office to bathtub to nowhere. As far as I’m concerned, she might have stridden a little farther — off camera.

What’s more, CIA agent Gregg Beam (David Harbour) is so buffoonish that one can’t be sure what’s up with that role. Is the actor so inept? Or is that the producers’ idea of the Bush-era CIA? Or is he playing for laughs? Or all of the above?

In my book, acting means that you can believe the actors that they are who they play. And there’s no way any of the three above actors could be mistaken for secret agents in this movie.

In contrast, Giancarlo Giannini convinces as an aging agent warhorse René Mathis, while Kurylenko makes all the right moves to get Camille across as a credible avenger. Yet the one performance worthy of note comes from Amalric, whose quirky, laid-back interpretation of “evil” capitalist Greene alone can keep the movie from getting lost in a desert of acting so wooden it’s petrified.

Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace

Well, if acting is one half of a movie’s soul, plot-theme is the other. And that’s the weakest part of Quantum of Solace.

Cartoonish mega-capitalists bent on world domination are nothing new to the Bond universe. Yet this time around, you don’t have to try to root out the human race to qualify as an evil capitalist. Simply being a capitalist is enough.

In the Bond universe, just like in the McCain and Obama universes, resources, like water or oil, are “somehow” there. They’re not produced, refined, or distributed by anyone, least of all by industrialists.

All that capitalists do is take control of resources or goods — of course by violent, fraudulent, or otherwise shady means — and double the price on consumers. And somehow the “price gouging” is morally blacker than the violence.

Bond himself, Daniel Craig, channeling Ellsworth Toohey: “The bad guys are doing what they’ve kind of always done, and they’re trying to sort of mess around with countries and with states for their own benefit. For their own individual benefit as opposed to for the people.” (Source: http://uk.movies.ign.com/articles/864/864542p1.html)

Throughout the movie, the heroes act rascally, while the “villains” can hardly be blamed for more than trying to establish a fresh water monopoly and to overthrow the (it is implied) democratically elected socialist government of Bolivia. Even regarding killings and cruelty, the so-called heroes are nearly indistinguishable from the so-called villains. In the end, it looks like Greene’s capital crime, the one Bond punishes him for, is not so much killing people as monopolizing the water supply.

“The heroes and villains all get mixed up.” — Mathis.

As has been said of Kill Bill, there’s nobody viewers can root for in this movie — except maybe the “villains.”

“When you can’t tell your friends from your enemies, it’s time to go.” — M.

That might be directly addressed to the audience. Yet where to turn? Sadly, Hollywood being liberal central, collectivist propaganda is par for the movie course.

To paraphrase another left-wing favorite, The Big Lebowski: Sometimes there’s a movie that’s the movie for its time, it fits right in there — and this year, that’s Quantum of Solace. It’s the paramount movie of the Obama age.

James Bond is, more than ever, the people’s hero. And the people understand less than ever who their friends are. Government agents or capitalists?

For further exploration: http://www.007.com/

Alexander Butziger is the author of the Kevin Traynor series of capitalist mystery novels. His latest book, Phantom Train, explores the nature of the paranormal. Adventure number three, Mysterious Boat, is forthcoming. More stories and his blog can be found at Reason and Liberty Central.