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SHELL GAME
by Robert Cotton
Grade: B-
Well now, where to begin. I have waited two years for this film and I cannot tell you how disappointed I was. I was trapped in a world that was badly edited, horribly directed, written with little characterization and for the first time ever I can actually say that I was glad it was less than two hours. I’m going to step away from my usual review format this time, to try and explain why I did not like this film. It’s very simple. Direction. The worst. In the entire series. Marc Forster should be relegated to designing video games for those afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder. I cannot believe they let Martin Campbell go after Casino Royale. Action sequences that were filmed in this new style wherein the action is so close up that we’re supposed to feel we’re in the film itself? Rubbish. At one point in the opening sequence the door is ripped off the Aston and Bond should have to fight to stay alive. Instead, with no establishing shots (as throughout the film) we had no idea from one second to the next what we should be focusing on. Took me completely out of the film, from minute one. Did I really see the door fly off? Why isn’t Bond reacting to the fact that death is literally at his shoulder? Possibly he saw the door fly off and was caught unawares by the quick editing and thinks it’s back on? If you’re going to do something incredible action-wise, give me some time and some distance to take it in. Casino Royale handled this perfectly. You got to see the action, it’s effect on the characters and their surroundings. I do not like the wobbly camera/quick edit style of film making that is currently in vogue. I am not paying to see a Bourne rip-off. I am paying to see the height, the pinnacle of a genre. I am paying to see James Bond and by God I want to see what I’m paying for. You can take your chunks flying and your flaming fists of inconsequence and shove off. I want action that goes somewhere. I am not interested in a din of random blurry and out of focus film clips shoved together to make me think I’ve seen something. I said this back a few films. James Bond should set the tone for the genre, not follow along limply behind.
Speaking of limp, who chose this theme song? Two dissonant singers yelling about various ways to lose one’s life while one of them hits a single key on a piano and the other hits power chords until his fingers bleed? Easily surpasses Sheryl Crow’s “Tomorrow Never Dies” as my personal choice for worst theme song. Dreadful. An awful theme against an equally awful credit sequence. Where the hell is Daniel Kleinman when we need him? Like I said, out of it at minute one. Let’s move on to minute two and see what happens. We find Mr. White in custody and then off we go into an action sequence which leads nowhere. The second of many. In fact, this will end up being my main critique of the film. It simply led nowhere. The Siena sequence? Great, show us a festival, a race with no set up, no background to tell us how significant it is, and then film an action sequence where if you blink you have given up your right to know what the hell’s going on.
Eon, if nothing else in my reviews ever resonates, ever gets past the corporate offices and escapes relegation to “Internet Reviewer Status”, please listen to this one note. Once you find a director with a feel for the character and the franchise, lock him in. Martin Campbell or not, you desperately need to do this if you want to continue the quality of the series. The Directors you have chosen, from Terence Young onward, have put their individual stamp on Bond for better or worse. For God’s sake Campbell has saved the series from irrelevance twice so far. Luck or skill, you are in a far better position to tell me. And no, I don’t really care why he didn’t continue, you need to get him back. As usual in these reviews, I turn next to the actor playing Bond. As most of you know, Bond sophomore efforts seem to be a mixed bag. From Russia With Love, Connery’s second is easily the best film in the entire series, whereas Moore’s second, The Man With The Golden Gun, is the absolute worst. Dalton’s Licence To Kill crashed and burned except with fans and Brosnan’s Tomorrow Never Dies was truly his least successful effort. How did Daniel Craig do? Craig was exceptional. He was basically a crash-test dummy for most of the film, but when he was allowed some character work, the film moved along quite well. Although I must admit, when he was drinking his sixth Vesper, I half expected to see him attempting to drink it from seven different angles, cut together specifically to show us how damn clever the director thinks he is. More on Craig later. The plot, what little there was of it, was decent. Apparently QUANTUM, a secret organization of very rich people who have no problem talking out loud during an opera, have come up with a brilliant plan for world domination involving liquidity of assets both water and monetarily based. In fact, they’re so secret that not only do the girls handing out gift bags know who each of them are; they each have special hearing aids embossed with “Q&rdqo;s that for some reason had me thinking of Big O from the Dean Martin “Matt Helm&rdqo; series. Never a good thing. (A quick note about the opera sequence. Beautifully done. Didn’t even mind the hearing aids once they served a purpose. One absolutely great sequence marred only by a sudden turn into The Spy Who Loved Me. If nothing else, the film pulled this whole piece off extremely well.) This organization is run by a Dominic Greene, a very slight little man who shows his incredible menace by bugging his eyes out at various points during the film. Yes, he’s dangerous, but mostly to one woman, Camille, who keeps showing up so he can almost victimize her and James Bond can step in. There. Sound exciting? Surprisingly, quite a bit of it is. But it’s what’s missing that is more intriguing. What is this organization capable of? How did it survive so long without being detected? What are their real goals? Where do they really get their money? If they’re everywhere, let’s see MI6 rip itself apart trying to find the moles. But no. Instead, there’s a visual image from early on in the film, a desktop/computer screen in which an MI6 agent moves his hands from spot to spot like a high tech shell game, never really giving us time to focus on anything because, let’s be honest, there really isn’t anything there. This is the perfect metaphor for the film. We’ve been drawn into a shell game. Everything moves fast, looks nifty, but in the end, no matter which shell we choose, it’s empty. However, one must realize that this really isn’t the plot. This is the backdrop. The real plot, the reason we’ve supposedly waited two years, is revenge for the death of the love of Bond’s life, the oft-mentioned Vesper Lynd. At the end of Casino Royale, James Bond has lost everything. He’s lost his faith in everything but himself, he’s lost his naiveté, and most importantly he’s lost the woman he loves. So, is that our hero’s motivation? Well, it might be if he didn’t hate her so much for saving his life and giving him all the clues he needs to start hunting down her killers. Make sense? Read on. So, how has Bond changed in the ten screen minutes between Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace? Well, first of all, our non-hybrid hero, our finally well-rounded character, has been slammed headfirst into the tired hybrid formula that Casino Royale was such a welcome reprieve from. Yes, we’re back to snippets from previous films, but now, with a realistic character running things, the fit is totally uncomfortable. True, they keep mentioning Vesper to keep the thread going, but in the end, we’re back to world domination, villains with semi-interesting architectural hideaways and more scenes stolen from Licence To Kill than a sane person would want to shake a stick at. Yes, we’re really taking the way back machine to the Bond of the 1990’s, but there’s one essential difference here. Daniel Craig. No matter how hard the writers and director try, Craig is just too damn good to fall into place. He’s going to play a character no matter what. And he does. And it’s how he does it that makes what works in the film work. We’ve mentioned Bond’s motivational mix-up. Craig takes that confused concept and turns it into Bond’s own personal conundrum. In Casino Royale, Bond made what he believes to be his greatest mistake. He let Vesper “in”. He fell in love. Now, with her death, he has made the decision that he will no longer be reachable. He has cut off his emotional side, turned himself into a killing machine. Thus, if feeling weakens resolve, unfeeling strengthens it. (A telling line comes when he can’t tell M what “Fields” first name was after he’s slept with her and later discovered her dead. He’d never even considered that she had a first name. An excellent character note.) I must admit, I have not read the script for this one, but watching the film, the only thread that actually kept the thing moving, was my interest in seeing Mr. Craig pull off this character arc. No matter how scorched-earth most of this review will seem, I must say that this is not a reflection on Craig’s performance. His slow transition from pure killing machine to the man he becomes, face to face with the main villain in the desert, is the supremely redeeming quality of this film. It is the reason this film gets the letter grade it receives at the end, and the reason I will willingly line up for the next adventure. I will also not savage the writers. There’s a good story here, ruined by ridiculously bad editing and a seemingly total lack of respect for the character we’re supposed to be rooting for. We will get to the very end of the film later, yet, since this film is essentially a sequel, we’re fairly trapped into looking at it as such; however there is a danger in that, as we will see when we get back to Craig’s performance later on. But for now, there’s scorching to be done and much bracken to be burnt away. First of all, to my favorite supporting character in both films, René Mathis. Giancarlo Giannini was completely wasted. He was so desperately what James Bond needed to get his character up to speed, and yet, once we’ve actually had some character work, bam, he’s trapped in a subplot which once again led nowhere. Mathis shows up when Bond pulls him into the plot. We learn about Mathis. We go to South America. Mathis goes to a party, then gets killed. And this gets us where? Mathis could have been Bond’s ticket into the real world of spydom. He could have been the mentor that teaches Bond how to not be simply a blunt instrument, that the world of international intrigue requires thought, requires a modicum of art, of style. Instead, he’s a throwaway. Literally. I was so disappointed by this misstep that I could not believe the filmmakers would give up so much for so little. It would have taken one scene. We see Mathis setting up their partnership, showing Bond that sometimes a lighter touch is necessary. Bond could still have barreled through, but he would have been given a hint that someday, if he really intended on surviving, he would have to adapt. True, Mathis’ final scene was touching, but how much more it could have been made it unendurable. Judi Dench did fine as M, but had nowhere to go. And I’m too old to give a shit if M says “shit.” And may I say how absolutely sick I have become of South American Dictators? Someday this stereotype is going to be recognized as what it is, a shortcut that gives an audience someone to hiss at rather than putting in actual characterization. Felix? Say, let’s throw poor Jeffrey Wright into a movie just so he can look like he’s suffering from indigestion for five minutes. Do not get me wrong, Jeffrey Wright is absolutely fine as Felix. In fact, he and Bond in the bar ended up being a high point, which amazingly enough led once again to a completely useless action sequence when some good dialogue and the interaction between two characters (not to mention two very accomplished actors) might have given us easily enough information to hang some semblance of plotting on. The villain? I just didn’t care. Completely ineffectual. I liked his plot; the concept of an eco-terrorist in expensive clothing definitely became intriguing, but then led nowhere. Shall we even mention the A View to A Kill connection here? The underground lake? If you’re going to set this stuff up, use it. But they don’t. And it’s damn nice of our hero to see the villagers run out of water and simply get on a bus. True, his character might not have cared at this point, but the girl might have said something. Actually, that would have been an incredibly good place to give Bond a bit of humanity. He’s lost Vesper, he’s lost Mathis, he’s barely survived in the desert and is starting to glimpse his human connections. He finds a way to communicate to the villagers that there’s water in the canyon. But no. Too much work. Would have slowed the film down after that incredibly predictable flying sequence. Anyone out there really see how Bond defeated his enemies in the sky? Really? Or do you just think you did. Wow, let’s have some snazzy editing instead of really showing us. That’ll do, pig. That’ll do. Camille. Middling. There are more than a few good notes from this orchestra, but not enough to play a whole tune. I cannot truthfully say that I cared a whit about her predicament. She was the 2008 model of Lupe from LTK, all the way down to the scars. I will say that they did handle the scars well, showing them without mentioning them until later.
Agent Fields was a complete waste of time. Her seduction scene, if it can be called that, was obviously taken from Thunderball with just a hint of Moonraker and that is the best thing I can say about that. And do we really need a Goldfinger reference in 2008? We’ve come full circle to Roald Dahl’s list of required characters for a Bond film. Sacrificial lamb chops anyone? The hotel in the desert was nearly an absolute waste of time. A quick mention of fuel cells so we know what’s blowing up when things start exploding, a reminder that South American Dictators like ladies, cigars and beer, and a quick note, lest we forget, that even in the middle of a South American desert with nothing around for miles, Henchmen are no good at spotting two figures approaching from any distance whatsoever. And when And why are we putting ourselves through this conclusion? One scene. One moment that makes this whole section worthwhile. The set up. The girl, Camille, has completed her story arc. She has killed the man who murdered her parents, who scarred her for life with fire. And now she and Bond are trapped in a burning room. In one of the best scenes in the film, we are reminded at once of Bond and Vesper in the shower from Casino Royale, the moment when he first let Vesper into his heart. There was water, here is fire. He holds the girl close to him, just as he did Vesper, and in that moment, she tells him to go ahead and kill her, that she would rather die by the bullet than burn to death. Bond is taken aback. For a moment we actually think he may do it, but he stops. He stops and everything he’s done to destroy his feelings dissolves away. But this is more. This is his redemption. He is saving the girl and himself, and in a larger sense, he comes to understand Vesper’s choice and why she made it. He turns, shoots the aforementioned fuel cell and they escape. From this point on, James Bond as a killing machine is done. When he leaves Greene in the desert, he knows the man will die, but he also knows that he, Bond, will not do it. He’s turned the corner and can now become the man we’re going to follow for the rest of the series. Then, as a sort of postscript, to finish off his transformation, we’re taken to Russia for one last moment. When Bond walks into the apartment to confront the man he truly has been hunting since the film began, even Bond doesn’t know whether or not he will kill the man. Neither, honestly, do we, until he makes up his mind. And it is that moment, when he makes that decision, that he is free. One last thing. This was the wrong title for the film. Yes, it fit in a way, but I honestly wondered why, with a perfectly good metaphor staring us straight in the face, why we didn’t go for The Property of a Lady. What’s the metaphor? The necklace. The relationship between Bond and Vesper. Didn’t he say he was hers in the previous film? And why not at least show us the necklace a bit earlier so we’re reminded of it, of its significance. It was certainly important enough to become the film’s final shot. Run with it. It would easily have given us the connection we needed in order to make that final shot count. So, where do we go from here? I was going to give Quantum of Solace a C+ until the final shot faded. Barely passable. Then, the gunbarrel slid handsomely across the screen and I was pulled back in for a few seconds of connection with over 40 years of my favorite character. So, in the end, for purely sentimental reasons, that brought it up to barely a B-, quite a drop-off from my solid A of Casino Royale. I said in my last review that Eon had made the mistake of showing us how good they could be, and that no longer would simply making do suffice. Sadly, except for Daniel Craig, Quantum of Solace simply made do. I expect more next time. But the most important question for me, after all these years, all these films, comes down to this. When the lights go down and (hopefully) the familiar strains play over the single white circle crossing the screen, will I be there? James Bond Will Return. And so will I.
Contact the Author: Robert Cotton
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