Quantum of Solace/Casino Royale

That's the point with this Bond: He hasn't earned the "cheek." He hasn't become a smartass who takes a different lady each movie yet. He hasn't had to grow that personality - some would say Bond is cheeky because he did so in order to keep himself alive.

Now, this is just a raw Bond, a rookie Bond learning how to handle situations without getting emotional (like when he ordered the martini in Casino Royale). It's fun as hell to watch. With Brosnan (and other before him when they have a few movies under their belts), they had gotten too formulaic. "Shaken, not stirred," Hey! Cool car with gadgets! "Bond, James Bond." Oh NO! Bond and latest Bond girl captured! Whew! They escape, but not without figuring out exactly what the bad guy is doing, and how to thwart it! Bad guy defeated . . . last-minute love scene with some humor as superiors try to contact Bond, The End.

Rinse, Repeat, make a mint. Etc.

This is different. Admitttedly, I preferred Clive Owen (as Brutal Bond) or Hugh Jackman (as Cheeky Bond), but Daniel Craig's Bond, and these films, have much potential. I especially like that they stopped the stunt casting of the Bond Girls that brought us Christmas Jones.

 

Amen to the stunt casting.

Okay, I'm buying the nascent Bond point. Maybe I need to watch again in the next few days with that, and the "arc theory" in mind. Maybe I'll appreciate it more. Maybe I just didn't get it.

I stand by my argument that a little more plot, though. More linear movement, instead of action, explanation, action, so forth.

 

Bond movies are supposed to have a plot?

 

My only problem with this movie is that the poker tournament lasted a bit too long (I think it was like 50 minutes out of a 2hr20min movie).

The action was great, Craig was fantastic as a "raw" Bond (I like the description of him being more of a sledgehammer than a scalpel in this flick) and it got away from the schlockiness of every Bond flick since 'Goldeneye' (which I thought was excellent).

 

Best line from a movie-ending scene where Bond is doinking his Bond girl: Moonraker. He's nailing the chick on the Space Shuttle in a weightless state. The boys back at HQ are trying to get make contact. Just as the fuzzy picture clears up to show the doinking, Q is looking at a monitor and announces "I think he's attempting re-entry!"

However, the best Bond line of any movie, with any Bond, remains Goldfinger.

"My name is Pussy Galore."

"I must be dreaming."

 

Spy who loved me....

"I believe he's keeping the British end up..."

 

Craig's the best Bond since Connery. I liked Casino Royale a lot.

The books are embarrassingly bad---think of Tom Clancy on a really bad day.

The lifesaver is you can knock one off in a couple of hours.

Can anyone explain what the title "Quantum of Solace" means?

 

I'm not sure what they're using it to refer to in the movie but it was originally the title of a Fleming short story from back in the day --- Bond and the colonial governor of the Bahamas are at Government House in Nassau. From Wikipedia:

<blockquote>"Quantum of Solace" is not a spy story and James Bond appears only in the background. Told in the style of W Somerset Maugham, the tale has Bond attending a boring dinner party at the Government House in Nassau, Bahamas with a group of socialites he can't stand.

Bond makes a remark after dinner when the other guests have left in order to stimulate conversation, about always having thought it would be nice to marry an air hostess. This solicits a careful reply from the elderly Governor of The Bahamas who tells 007 a sad tale about a relationship between a former civil servant he calls Philip Masters, stationed in Bermuda, and air hostess Rhoda Llewellyn. After meeting aboard a flight to London the two eventually married but after a time Rhoda became unhappy with her life as a housewife. She then began a long open affair with the eldest son of a rich Bermudan family. As a result Masters' work deteriorated and he suffered a nervous breakdown. After recovering he was given a break from Bermuda by the governor and sent on an assignment to Washington to negotiate fishing rights with the US. At the same time the governor's wife had a talk with Rhoda just as her affair ended. Masters returned a few months later and decided to end his marriage, although he and Rhoda continued to appear as a happy couple in public. Masters returned alone to the UK, leaving a penniless Rhoda stranded in Bermuda, an act which he'd been incapable of carrying out merely months earlier. But Masters never recovered emotionally, nor recaptured any spark of vitality. The governor goes on to tell Bond how after a time Rhoda married a rich Canadian and seems to be happy. When Bond remarks that she hardly deserved her good fortune, the governor says that Masters had always been rather weak, and that perhaps Fate chose Rhoda as its instrument to teach him a lesson. The governor then reveals that the dinner companions whom Bond found so boring were in fact Rhoda and her rich Canadian husband. Bond then tells the governor Rhoda was much more interesting than he had thought.

While the story does not include action elements, as other Fleming tales do, it attempts to posit that Bond's adventures pale in comparison with real life drama. Bond reflects that the lives of the people he passes somewhat superficial judgements upon can in fact hide poignant episodes.

Quantum of Solace was chosen as the title of the 22nd Bond movie, although it only shares the story's title, and nothing else.</blockquote>

The new movie picks up an hour after Casino Royale's end. Quantum is the unnamed antagonist group in CR and, I think, steps into the place of SPECTRE back in the 70s (and SMERSH before that). I believe the title refers to Bond's emotional turmoil after the betrayal by and death of Vesper Lynd, but as I said I'm not sure.

 

I recently read Fleming's Casino Royale, it was bad. The absolute genius of the film, the series, is the quality and depth of characters in contrast to the simple one dimentional versions in the book.

The version of Casino Royale is one of my favorite Bond movies, it's terrific without being unbeleivably over the top.

 

Brosnan is getting a bit of a bad rap here. The reason he left is that he wanted the series to go in a more realistic plot driven direction, but the producers wanted to continue the special effects and silliness.

 

And then when they cast Daniel Craig, they go in a more realistic plot-driven direction.

 

Saw this last night.
Lots of action.
Daniel Craig is really good.
The movie was better than okay, but it felt like part 2 of much longer movie.
The story picks up roughly five minutes after the finish of the first one.

So, if you haven't seen the first one, don't bother.

I liked it, but I'm a little bit of a Bond nerd.