James Bond is back. I mean the real James Bond 007, not some washed up replica from the eighties trundling around with his gadgets. I got news to share on the film to come: Quantum of Solace.
Casino Royale took us back successfully to a darker and grittier Bond, nearer to Ian Flemming's original vision, as I believe. Quantum of Solace goes even further back, so far as to take up citations from other Bond films in its story and its pictures. The death of one of the major characters is a direct quote to Goldfinger's most iconic shot, where Jill Masterson was left dead covered in gold paint. Here, Agent Fields is covered in oil. Gemma Arterton said, she couldn't move, couldn't see, couldn't breathe or hear because the oil went into her ears. Leaves us to the question which drama school taught her to breathe through her ears?
Oscar winning director Marc Foster has tried and managed to do a movie much simpler and therefore more real than his high tech predecessors. By using green screen only where really necessary he creates reality instead of humbug gadgetry. With full support from producer Barbara Broccoli he went back to the sixties' Bond to find the imagery for the story.
At the end of Casino Royale, Bond's lover Vesper Lynd gave his multimillionpound poker winnings to the shadowy villain Mr White, conveniently dying before explaining why. Bond tracked White to a lakeside villa in Italy, and shot him in the leg.
As Quantum of Solace opens, Bond and M are interrogating White to find, that the organisation that turned Vesper is called Quantum with agents in the CIA and the British government. In Siena, Bond chases and corners one of these rogues who is linked to a bank in Haiti. This chase starting in the bowels of the city, crossing the Palio (an ancient horse race dating back to the 14th century and carried out without saddles) goes on across the rooftops of Siena ending on top of a bus. It shows all Daniel Craig's own stunts, so it is well worth watching. Even though Marc Foster admits that the bit with the bus was just put in because nobody could figure out any other way to get Bond to Mitchell, the agent he was chasing.
The action moves to South America, where Bond meets (and sleeps with) Agent Fields. He gives her, a novice agent, a brush over as well, buying her a Prada dress. The pictures remind one very much of Breakfast at Tiffany's, on more of his shot quotations by Foster.
Together, Bond and Fields attend a fundraiser for Greene Planet, a supposedly ecofriendly organisation headed by the charming Dominic Greene. The scene was shot in the Old Union Club in Panama City, bombed out by the Americans under one pretext or another. There, Bond also encounters Camille, who has her own personal vendetta against Greene. Camille is played by Olga Kurylenko who does most of her own stunts, too. And she learned how to strip a pistol in 8 seconds, and to put it back together again in 11.
Bond then rescues Camille from a kidnapping, wildly overstepping his mission parameters and angering the Foreign Office to the extent of being put on the capture or kill list of M. This leads to a wild ride on motorcycles and a spectacular boat race, all supposedly in Haiti but filmed in Panama.
Illicitly following Greene to Austria, Bond learns more of his plans - Greene will finance a bloody coup by an exiled Bolivian General in exchange for a seemingly worthless plot of land in the desert. (It doesn't say which desert, but Bolivia ain't got no nothing like desert, this just as an aside.) The final shot is then done in Chile's Atacama Desert where Bond and Camille land still in Opera clothes. The final scene is a major explosion in a desert hotel, but actually ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile.
For Swiss director Marc Foster this film was an adventure. Coming from high art low budget films, the change into low art high budget venture was stunning. But he manages well to bring art into this purely commercial movie. I am sure he will not regret to have followed Orson Well's advice that he regretted most in his live never to have made a commercial movie.
