Quantum of Solace


When change is GOOD.


While keeping the idea of the intelligent, elegant British secret agent that bad guys can't possibly outsmart and ladies can't possibly refuse going to bed with, Daniel Craig makes a much more believable spy than any other James Bond (if not excessively British, okay, but wasn't Sean Connery Scotish?).


Although in this new new “episode”, Bond's heroic deeds seem to be more diluted in visual effects than in Casino Royal, and lacking the memorable scenes (like the opening and the poison scene -tremendous, see it-), Quantum of Solace is still a very valid film, and so is the new Bond generation, to which I can't help to dedicate a few more paragraphs...


Mark Forster's new Bond is very capable, you can see he undertook a tough training to become a “00”, yet he struggles in his own over-human way. Believable-yet-amazing is always better than spectacular just for the sake of it.



Leaving aside the exaggerate advertising campaign that has flooded our lives for the past month, I like to think that the secret to keep such an old character “in” doesn't lay in the more spectacular approach visual-effects-wise, or the additional violence added to the series. But in the daring but necessary time re-location of the character and, of course, in the fact that the new Bond stories, unlike the classic ones, move forward and force the characters to grow, evolve, or even die.


It would look like what a few years ago wasn't but a moribund franchise still has a lot more fuel to keep going. In the days of degrading narrative and worshippers of J.K Rowling, this is something to be looking forward to. Too bad that in this second new film visual effects have such a patent, visible prominence, when it wasn't really called for.