The Bond Identity

I don’t usually attend midnight screenings, but since I missed not one but two press screenings of Quantum of Solace – and given the fact that I think that Daniel Craig is like, the second coming – I just had to buck up, have a delicious Toll House chocolate chip ice cream sandwich, and stay up late last night.

It was sooo worth it.

Directed by Marc Forster (the auteur behind Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, and Stranger Than Fiction), Quantum of Solace is the first sequel in the enduringly successful James Bond franchise.

The movie picks up right where Casino Royale left off, with 007 (Craig) betrayed by Vesper Lynd (the indelible Eva Green), and quite thirsty, not for martinis but rather for revenge.

It opens with an eye-catching car chase across Italy’s Lake Garda, with Bond racing to deliver Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), whom he captured in the last movie, to M (Judi Dench) for an interrogation that proves all-too revealing.

It turns out that QUANTUM, the dangerous and far-reaching organization for which Mr. White works, is unknown to MI6, and has “people everywhere,” including the agency.

Cut to another 007 chase, after an attempt on M’s life, this time across Siena’s tiled rooftops.

With Bond veering recklessly over revenge’s edge – M, still grooming him, needs to know she can trust him – the two realize they’ve stumbled onto a seriously nasty organization.

A clue leads our favorite secret agent to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he bumps into feisty Camille (Olga Kurylenko, from Paris, Je T’aime), a woman who has her own vendetta.

Camille leads Bond straight to Dominic Greene (an oh-that’s-what-he-looks-like Mathieu Amalric, from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), a ruthless business man and major force within QUANTUM.

On a mission that leads him to Austria, Italy, and South America, 007 discovers that Greene, conspiring to take total control of one of the world’s most important natural resources, is forging a deal with the exiled Gen. Medrano from Bolivia. Using his associates in the organization, and manipulating his powerful contacts within the CIA and the British government, Greene plans to overthrow the existing regime in the Latin American country, and give Medrano control of the country in exchange for a seemingly barren piece of land.

That’s where the Huh? moment in Quantum of Solace comes in – just like in all of the Bond movies. The villain wants what? But it doesn’t matter, I suppose, since the reason you’ll be in the movie theater is to see what 007 will do to save the world, after all.

What is interesting about this follow-up is that, since Casino Royale ushered in the Craig Era and re-introduced the James Bond character as a more real, grittier, and blonder fellow, Quantum of Solace allows Bond to grow, not too much just yet, into the man he will become.

At 105 minutes, this is the shortest Bond movie of them all, but it’s a taut one. When the credits finish rolling, the promise that James Bond – and Craig (he’s signed on for two more movies) – will be back appears.

I cannot wait.

My Rating ***1/2

Photo: MGM/Columbia Pictures.