Sunday, January 11, 2009

Quantum of Solace

First, the title appears to mean very little, although a site called the James Bond Dossier gives a fairly good indication that it actually does mean something. Apparently 'quantum' can mean an amount, in which case, 'a small amount of comfort' might a reasonable translation.
The movie is high energy, lots of explosions, little sensible dialogue, lots more explosions, the inevitable inability of villains to kill someone even with a machine gun, car chases, rooftop chases, plenty of people getting killed for no apparent reason, explosions, and finally, lots and lots of explosions. Out of which Bond, his lady friend, and the villain all manage to escape. As you'd expect.
Beyond that, the film washes over the brain, seldom engaging it in any way at all. It's full of stuff but what that stuff is, is anybody's guess. Most things that happen in the movie have very little to do with anything, especially the action sequences, which come at regular intervals, just in case anyone with even half a brain wants to do some thinking for a while.
The action sequences are cut in such a way that most of the time you have no idea what's going on, which is a pity, because they look as though originally they were staged very cleverly. And there are all sorts of unexplained things. Both Bond and M appear to get shot very early in the piece, but make no comment about the fact that they're both still alive in the next sequence.
I suspect the film is full of Hitchockian McGuffins, which the scriptwriters thought nobody would want explained so they threw them all in. To detail them all would be a waste of time; suffice to say: this Bond film is all-out energy, rather like Mumma Mia, but when you walk out of the film you rather wonder what you've spent a couple of hours doing.

No comments: