And for some critics Quantum of Solace is little more than a string of white-knuckle rides and special effects hung onto an almost invisible story-line. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If we remember that Quantum is a continuation of Casino Royale (and don't watch the one until you've watched the other) then there is a strong narrative continuum (albeit in the hands of a different director) that is pushed forward with an extremely strong visual sense that can, at times, leave you reeling, but which can also eliminate the need for words. We know, without being told, that Bond is out for revenge, and God help anyone who gets in his way. In many ways the hard, gritty, dirty, truly painful violence that fuels this film's drive can be seen as the inner pain that completely engulfed James Bond as he desperately tried to save the drowning Vesper Lynd – the woman he loved - in the murky waters of Venice's Grand Canal a few minutes before the end of Casino Royale.
It is the same feeling that Fleming was able to put across in a few well placed words at the end of his 1963 novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where Bond's new wife, Teresa di Vicenzo (Tracy), is gunned down at the wheel of their Lancia as they make their way along the Austrian Autobahn toward an Italian honeymoon. It's a small heart-breaking piece of prose that shows Fleming at his most gentle. “You see...” Bond tells the dead Tracy, before he blacks out “...we've got all the time in the world.”.
The writers of Quantum of Solace, Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who also wrote the screenplay of Casino Royale) have picked up on the possible aftermath of that Fleming sentiment, creating out of it a devastating machine of revenge and single-mindedness that only the wholly believable acting of Daniel Craig can now bring to the screen as James Bond. Craig's James Bond never gives up, not ever, not for a second, and we, the audience, are with him, willing him on – even at his most hateful and violent – to succeed, to break and destroy, on our behalf, all the wrongs, and woes, and cruelties of this world. Craig has turned a limp joker of a Bond into a huge sub-Shakespearean character who, with a total sense of duty, fights evil wherever and whenever he comes across it. And in Quantum of Solace Craig's Bond also has to fight his own inner demons and agonies as well as the enemies of the world, be they corrupt politicians, dictators, and the head of a devious utility corporation who is out to dam the world's water supply for his own profit. By the end of the film Craig has made it all completely real. The demons and the baddies are dead, but with his love for Vesper now secure, a fully realised Bond walks off screen at the end.
As well as the brilliantly exhausting set-pieces, this film also pays homage to the film industry, not least a previous Bond film, Goldfinger, and, in a truly glorious sequence during a performance of Puccini's Tosca, to Francis Ford Coppola and the Godfather series of films.
I believe Quantum of Solace is an extraordinary film in its own right, and a more than worthy successor to Casino Royale.
As Daniel Craig is contracted to make four Bond films I hope one of the next two will be a version of Sebastian Faulks' Bond novel, Devil May Care.
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