Quantum of Solace
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008Before my huge birthday dinner, I watched Quantum of Solace with a bunch of my friends. I’ll say I’m somewhat of a minor 007 fan. I’m not a huge fanatic, but I did watch a lot of the older movies when I was younger (albeit not fully understanding all the plot lines), and did watch all the newer (post-Moore) ones.
I didn’t watch Casino Royale until just two weeks ago at Brian’s birthday party; I requested to borrow the DVD because I knew Quantum was coming out in two weeks and I wanted to watch it. I really liked Casino Royale. It definitely was a radical departure from all the Pierce Brosnan films. I found it to be more of a spy film than its immediate predecessors. As I think Krispy mentioned, it (and Quantum) turned out to be somewhat Bourne-like (and I thoroughly enjoyed the Bourne series overall). They’re still as action-oriented before, but I feel they’re a bit smarter and sophisticated too. It helps in that respect that the new Bond is far more serious. And the villains’ schemes are not as far-fetched as before.
What I like about the new movies is, at least from the first two, it seems like there will be a continiuing storyline involving Quantum. Whereas the previous movies were largely independent from each other, the new ones have been closely tied together. Of course, this makes it more difficult to understand the movies if watched out of sequence, but having an unresolved mystery be slowly revealed over the course of several movies makes the series more exciting, I think. Well, there’s no guarantee that that tradition will continue in the future, but I hope it will. It makes the series feel more epic, along the lines of the alien conspiracy of The X-Files or the Centre in The Pretender. The new movies are much heavier too. Deaths in Casino and Quantum have more impact than in previous movies.
I think that knowing there’s this secret organization makes the main villain in Quantum less memorable. There are no super-weapons, no direct threats on nations, no evil mastermind hellbent on world domination. Greene’s role is much more subtle, fitting that of Quantum’s methodologies so it is appropriate, but it also not as superficially impressive as say hijacking a satellite laser. Just another example about how Quantum focuses as much on the espionage as on the action.
One thing missing from Quantum, and from Casino for that matter, is a really cool tricked out car. But then I guess having an invisible car really pushed it over the edge of believability.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie, and I’m looking forward to more like it. Casino and Quantum have both deveolped as more than mindless action films, and such can be taken more seriously than their predecessors.
