Quantum of Solace, round 2.

Picking up from round 1: "I miss the erudite, bon vivant Bond, but [Daniel] Craig is a 007 for an earthier, edgier age," writes David Edelstein in New York. "Quantum of Solace is the most cynical of the 007 films, stopping well short of The Dark Knight (the champion popcorn-movie downer) but acidic enough to ask: How can even the most resolute spy make a dent in our despair?"

For Jonathan Kiefer, Quantum "feels like a misfire.... The real problems most likely have to do with the direction. That's from Marc Forster, currently well-established as a maker of art-house fare that tends toward the slushy (Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner), and perhaps simply out of his element here.... Quantum of Solace is a mean little movie, grim and single-minded, without the pleasure or mischief that has made Bond so endearing or contemptible depending whom you ask."

Updated through 11/16.

"The title is too frail by far," finds Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. "Someone should have called it 'Total of Wreckage.' Or 'Batter of Ram.'... The truth is that one thing alone lends gravity to Bond, and tethers him down to our shared earth, and that is the actor who plays him. This is where Craig and Connery score, and where the others lag behind. Quantum of Solace is too savage for family entertainment, but, as a study in headlong desperation, it's easier to believe in than many more ponderous films."

Meantime, Quantum's been scoring admirably at the European and Chinese box office, as Pamela McClintock reports for Variety.

The AV Club lists "13 fictional spies made possible by James Bond."

Updates: At the SpoutBlog, Kevin Kelly lists the "Cheesiest Lines from Bond Movies."

Online listening tip. Matt Singer and Alison Willmore: "On this week's IFC News podcast, we look at the reinvention of the James Bond character in franchise reboot Casino Royale and the new Quantum of Solace, including what's worked, what hasn't, the shadow of the Bourne films and whether in updating the franchise and the character the new film has done away with too many of the things that made Bond Bond."

Updates, 11/12: "How fascinating is it that 2008's two most inconsolable, borderline psychotic movie heroes are Batman and James Bond?" asks Sean Burns. "[W]hat lingers after Quantum of Solace, besides the urge to whack the director over the head with a rolled-up newspaper, is the sheer pitilessness of its outlook. As in The Dark Knight, there's a deeply dismaying sense of a world without rules and nobody looking out for us save for that damaged, sadistic maniac who's ostensibly the hero. I guess escapism ain't what it used to be. Our childhood idols grew up and got mean." Also in the Philadelphia Weekly, Matt Prigge lists "Six thrillers with unusually anguished heroes."

"The second outing for this renovated, revitalized Bond, beautifully embodied in the battered physique and wounded near-menace of Daniel Craig, is the shortest, sharpest, and most devastating entry in the long-running franchise," argues Josef Braun.

"[I]f Casino Royale marked a return to greatness for the Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace represents a return to adequacy," counters James Rocchi at Cinematical.

"Craig's second outing as Bond is as frustrating, sloppy, and brusque as its predecessor was engaging, sleek, and unhurried," writes Robert Wilonsky in the Voice.

"I've been revisiting the Sean Connery Bonds lately, on widescreen projection, where the immaculate detail and lush photography of airports, country roads, mosques, and Ealing Studio interiors come alive." Erich Kuersten at Bright Lights After Dark: "But what I am really noticing is the full greatness of Connery's multi-leveled performances."

Updates, 11/13: Online listening tip. Melissa Anderson and Nathan Lee "rank the Bonds by butchness, give shoutouts to Eva Green, Dame Judi Dench, and Amy Winehouse, plus a smackdown on director Marc Forster and a report on the screening room shenanigans of the legendary CondeNastopussy herself, Anna Wintour."

"The totality perhaps meets the fundamental requirements of action and pace, hurtling forward with only the briefest of pauses and coming in at a tidy hour and three-quarters," writes Duncan Shepherd in the San Diego Reader. "As a likely result of that, it can seldom make time for the preparation that would give the action scenes sense and import. They are little more than turbulence. And the underlying split personality still remains: Why bother to infuse the Bond character with a greater air of reality if he's going to continue to be allowed the acrobatics of a Jackie Chan?"

"In essence, the charge to revive the Bond films is a search for its own 'quantum of solace' beneath the patina of glitz and brand marketing," writes Neil Morris in teh Independent Weekly. "For all its strengths, this latest effort tries to have it both ways. Instead, Quantum of Solace is further proof that oil and water just don't mix."

"Recent action pictures like Xavier Gens's Hitman have already stolen the series' chic, just as the Indiana Jones films have usurped its fun," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "Craig takes Bond beyond fun. Quantum offers the in-process restructuring of a pop myth."

"Quantum of Solace plays almost like a feature-length epilogue to its predecessor, and the novelty of the franchise reboot hasn't so much worn off as been squandered on a scenario lacking in genuine thrills and long on ill-advised navel-gazing," writes Bill Weber in Slant. "The recent Spider-Man and Batman smashes set the dismal course; now the Bond fantasies have joined the trend of pulp gone pretentious."

Updates, 11/14: "Is revenge the only possible motive for large-scale movie heroism these days?" asks AO Scott in the New York Times. "Does every hero, whether Batman or Jason Bourne, need to be so sad?... The Sean Connery James Bond movies of the 1960s were smooth, cosmopolitan comedies, which in the Roger Moore era sometimes ascended to the level of farce. With Mr. Craig, James Bond reveals himself to be - sigh - a tragic figure."

"From its hyper-edited, incoherent opening sequences to the dreary monotony of Bond's revenge kick, Quantum of Solace is one brutalizing bummer of a ride, a chain of increasingly explosive fight scenes strung together by bits of talky exposition," writes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post.

"Quantum's plot is strictly second-rate, the kind of generic evil-tycoon-hatching-a-diabolical-plan story that the franchise rolled out with such depressing regularity in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s," writes the New Republic's Christopher Orr. "And Amalric, who demonstrated his gifts in last year's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, disappointingly makes a less memorable impression as a Franco-corporatist monster than Michel Lonsdale did in Moonraker.... Yet despite such disappointments, there is solace in Quantum, and its name is Daniel Craig."

In the New Statesman, Ryan Gilbey notes that Quantum and Steve McQueen's Hunger opened on the same day in the UK, and you know what? "[S]hould you get your kicks watching limber male bodies being smashed, bashed, brutalised and pummelled in forensic close-up against a backdrop of implicit criticism of the British government, you could plump for either picture and still come up trumps."

"Part of the thrill of the last film was the breath of fresh air it introduced to the tired concept of Bond, as created in the Connery films, sucked dry during the Moore years, and somewhat freshened in the four Brosnan episodes," writes Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "There is plenty of room for more exploration of Daniel Craig's brutal, nearly humorless Bond, but Quantum of Solace doesn't really expand on Casino Royale so much as it resolves that film's dangling plot threads. So closely are the plots related that this might better have been called Casino Royale 2: The Revenge."

"Craig is the scrappiest of all Bonds, but he's also the most tender," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "And Quantum of Solace is best when director Marc Forster allows his star the latitude to explore emotions that, until Craig stepped into the shoes of the character, we didn't know Bond had. In fact, Quantum of Solace contains one of the most moving sequences I've seen in any Bond movie - including the devastating ending of Casino Royale - an emotionally exquisite Pietà that's the kind of thing you get when you allow your actors to carry a scene quietly and instinctively."

"[N]ow that the audience has adjusted to the notion of Bond as a tormented brute, we're starting to remember what drew us to this series in the first place: exotic locations, nifty surveillance technology, creative villains, and babes with ridiculous names." Dana Stevens in Slate: "In short, we're drawn by fantasy, pleasure, and fun, none of which figures on the to-do list of the new James Bond nor of the movie's director, Marc Forster."

"Don't ever let this happen again to James Bond," admonishes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "Quantum of Solace is his 22nd film and he will survive it, but for the 23rd it is necessary to go back to the drawing board and redesign from the ground up. Please understand: James Bond is not an action hero!"

"The sense of barely submerged emotions coupled with Craig's nonchalant, smoldering brutality gives life to all the old cliches," writes Noah Berlatsky in the Chicago Reader. "The car chase, the boat chase, the foot chase through crowded streets, the walk through the desert in evening clothes—he plays them all with unnerving directness."

"Reprising every element that made Casino interesting - particularly a tone set by its star's unsmiling face - Quantum of Solace lacks the shock of the new," writes Keith Phipps at the AV Club. "It also has trouble sustaining the appeal of the old.... Yet it still feels like the right Bond for the time."

Quantum "has only two built-in audiences: those who follow Daniel Craig, and those who follow James Bond," writes Jen Graves in the Stranger. "For everyone else, rent Casino Royale."

Ben Kenigsberg for Time Out New York: "Much has been made of the absence of Bond's signature quips, but there's something else that's absent: interest."

The LAT's Susan King meets Mathieu Amalric.

By the way, Mathias Raabe is reporting for the Netzeiting that the great designer Ken Adam (Goldfinger and six other Bond films) doesn't like the new Bond one bit. "The humor's all gone," he says.

"It's brisk and shiny, partially smart and frequently flashy; it's got loads of chases, escapes, fights, and explosions, as well as a game cast and a leading man who really sells the physical stuff," writes Scott Weinberg at Cinematical. "The plot is nothing more than your standard 'angry spy on a mission' hoo-hah, but it works well enough to support the sport and the spectacle... so why is it that Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace also feels like a missed opportunity, kind of an also-ran, and sort of a day late and a dollar short? Oh that's right. Because this is supposed to be a James Bond movie."

Quantum "fails precisely because it continues to treat James Bond, the character, as a matter of utmost gravity, and assumes that action sequences thrill primarily for the fact of their existence," argues the L Magazine's Mark Asch.

Screengrab lists "The Best & Worst James Bond Films of All Time!"

Jason Sperb rounds up the Bond Blog-a-Thon at Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope.

Updates, 11/15: Online listening tip. At Cinematical, James Rocchi and Spout's Kevin Kelly talk Bond.

"After the massive paradigm shift of Casino Royale, there's not lots of new ground for Quantum of Solace to uncover. But as an adrenaline-packed example of the new-paradigm Bond, it ranks with the legendary franchise's finest entries," finds Alonso Duralde at MSNBC.

For Tribeca, Kristin McCracken talks with Forster and new Bond girl Olga Kurylenko.

Updates, 11/16: "Quantum of Solace isn't frivolous or cheesy, but it isn't all that much fun either," writes Newsweek's David Ansen. "Craig is still the right guy for the job, but for his boiling-on-the-inside performance to work, he needs more to play with. He's doing a dark character study in a movie that rarely stops to catch its breath. Couldn't he have been allowed a little of the superspy's rakish charm?"

"[T]he unfortunate failure of Quantum of Solace certainly can't be ascribed to an overdose of capital-s Seriousness, the Paul Haggis-ized shout-outs to rapacious corporate greed - embodied in the faux-environmentalist kingpin Dominic Greene, warping Mathieu Amalric's endearingly froggy features into malevolent mode - undernourished Bolivian peons, and US governmental connivance with dictators and terrorists notwithstanding." Andrew Tracy in Reverse Shot: "To paraphrase Stanley Kauffmann, such frills are just serious enough to be entertaining, not enough to be serious. Where the film fails is in a regrettable abandonment of the (ever more surprising in hindsight) narrative integrity of Casino Royale, and in a sidelining of the brawny enigma that that first 'reboot' (bloody word...) took as its obsessive focus and fascination."

Posted by dwhudson at November 10, 2008 1:29 AM