FOKER'S MOVIE REVIEW QUANTUM OF SOLACE (From Surrey Comet)

FOKER'S MOVIE REVIEW QUANTUM OF SOLACE

5:18pm Tuesday 4th November 2008

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I made a trip out to the Odeon Kingston on the opening night of ‘Quantum of Solace’ specifically to review this film. However, I think that most reviews are probably academic, as I noticed that the opening weekend broke all UK box office records.

On the Friday alone it took £5 million and by Sunday it had reached £15 million smashing the current record held by the 2005 Harry Potter ‘Goblet of Fire’.

Is it any good?

Well this reviewer thinks so. I welcomed Daniel Craig right from the announcement that he was to be the new 007 in ‘Casino Royale’ and I think he has warmed to most of the hardened Bond fanatics, despite the attempts from some to destroy his interpretation with websites such as ‘danielcraigsnotbond.com’ ‘Quantum of Solace’ picks up about an hour from where ‘Casino Royale’ left off, with Bond out to get revenge for the death of his love Vesper Lynd. The film opens straight away with a manic car chase in Italy with the 007 trade mark Aston Martin being pursued by two Alfa Romeos with plenty of machine gun fire and dodging on-coming traffic. After a brief meeting with ‘M’ in an Italian warehouse Bond is off again chasing a bad guy over roof tops, through a lot of glass windows and ending up with a great fight sequence on top of scaffolding.

The Director of QofS Marc Forster has not had any previous experience in making ‘Action Movies’ and his work has been with such genres as comedy with Stranger than Fiction, family films with Finding Neverland and romantic drama with Monsters Ball. Yet with the help of Assistant Director Terry Madden who also worked on action sequences for Bourne Ultimatum, Jumper, X-men 3 and other Bond movies he does pull this off but I think he also tries to cram in as much as he can with the car chase, boat chase and aerobatic dog fight!.

Craig is a very gritty Bond who plays the role more like an out and out assassin and clearly does many of his own stunts which makes the viewer feel out of breath by the end of the film. Apart from the action he still has time for the usual casual romantic moment, this time with a young MI6 employee called Strawberry Fields sent by ‘M’ to bring Bond home, played by Gemma Arterton, last seen on our TV screens as Tess in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Although, he does tend to flirt more with ‘M’ played brilliantly by Judy Dench and I have to admit I can’t think of anyone else as good in this role.

Bond’s mission is to bring down the Quantum Organisation (the new SPECTRE?) with the help of a beautiful but determined young women Camille (Olga Kurylenko) who also has her own agenda.

Camille is the ex-girlfriend of our Bond villain Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) who is a slimy geek intent on securing water supplies in South Africa, obviously for huge sums of money but he seems to be well connected with the backing of the CIA and possibly the British Government?

I was asked by a friend of mine if it is ok to take their kids to see this movie. It is a 12A certificate and there are some violent scenes as 007 leaves a large body count in his wake but this film is no more violent than any current video game available on Playstation 3 or X-Box (which I think are probably more graphic!). Personally I’d say yes, unlike ‘The Dark Night’ which I think sneaked under the 12A radar.

There has already been some mixed reviews particularly noting the lack of gadgets (the nearest thing to a bond toy is his GPS mobile phone) a strong ‘caricature’ Bond Villain and the fact that he never utters those words ‘Bond……James Bond’. But hey!..it still has great action scenes, a Bond girl with a silly name (Pussy Galore anyone?), Felix Leiter, not one but seven Vodka Martini’s all at once, and Bond is just so dam cool and British….I loved it!

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