DVD Review: Quantum of Solace
I saw Quantum of Solace in the theater with my wife and my parents, and after it was over, I was a bit conflicted as to whether I like it or not. On one hand, the action was awesome. It was exciting and face-paced and frequent and somewhat believable and basically just rocked. Then on the other hand, we have the story, which was fairly weak, with leads that were quite confusing, and a villain that was bad, yes, but didn't seem very vicious or evil or have any kind of unique distinguishing character trait. He seemed more slimy than anything else. So where does that put me? Do I like it or not? After recently just watching the DVD, I'm still in the same pickle. So I guess all I can say is that I liked watching the action.
This film picks up only moments after the previous one, Casino Royale, ended. The first action scene is a car chase with Bond being pursued by guys with machine guns. Of course, Bond survives, and arrives at his destination, at which point we learn he had a guy stashed in the car's trunk the whole time, and somehow throughout all that gunfire they guy still survived. The, we learn, is Mr. White, and he is with some organization called Quantum that MI6 knows nothing about. Hey, kinda sounds like our intelligence agencies! Anyway, they barely begin to interrogate the guy when all of a sudden someone turns around and starts shooting everybody, helping Mr. White to escape! Only Bond and M are able to evade the slaughter, and James goes chasing off after the shooter.
After a long, and pretty cool chase scene, the shooter winds up dead. From here, something, I'm not sure what exactly, leads them to Haiti to find some guy, again, I'm not sure who exactly. Maybe if I watched it a few more times I would understand what they were doing, but I really don't care that much. Bottom line is that Bond is now in Haiti, and he kills the guy he was supposed to get information from. Then he steals the guy's briefcase, coincidentally meets a girl that thinks he's the guy that he just killed, because they were supposed to be trading something for something, and when he opens the briefcase he realizes that the dead guy was supposed to be assassinating this girl, not trading with her.
That whole scene seemed like a huge coincidental leap, but whatever, it did provide another little action sequence involving a guy on a motorcycle. Yeah, don't ask. So he follows the girl and watches her go into an area protected by guards... and then seens her being put on a boat, so he steals a boat and rescues her, and I have no idea where this story is supposed to be going. But we get an action sequence with boats out of it. Okay, so then Bond is somehow able to find the guy that put the girl on the boat, and he is at an airport getting on a private jet, which of course leads to an opera... WTF? Apparently there's some meeting going on there with the Quantum members using earpieces to communicate so they can be scattered about the opera, but Bond jacks one of them and interferes with their meeting, causing a gunfight action sequence.
Following me so far? If so, could you please help me to follow it? Now MI6 revokes Bonds credit cards for some reason... I think it had to do with killing someone that he didn't actually kill... so he goes to Italy to meet with an old friend, René Mathis, whom we met in Casino Royale. They both then travel to... somewhere, I don't remember, even those Mathis is retired and has a nice life, so I didn't quite get why he went. Guess he missed the action or something. Anyway, they go to this new country where a female MI6 agent intercepts Bond and insist that he return to the UK, but of course Bond seduces her, and she really doesn't do much in the film other than that.
Wow, all that and so far we've barely even touched on the main evil plot which is about some guy trying to control a large chunk of the water supply of some country so that he can charge more money for it. Oh my gosh, no! People will have to pay more money for water?! Yeah, in real life that would totally suck, but hardly seems like a plot for a James Bond movie. I am looking forward to the next movie, and really hope they bring a more impressive story. Action can only take you so far.
The DVD I watched was the 2-disc version, so there were a bunch of extra features. Disc one held only a music video and two theatrical trailers, so disc two is where the real extras are.
- Bond on Location - half hour featurette about going to the various locations.
- Start of Shooting - a short three minute featurette about starting the movie
- On Location - another short three minute featurette, this one talking about the different shooting locations
- Olga Kurylenko and the Boat Chase - a two minute featurette about the boat chase
- Director Marc Forster - three minute featurette about the director.
- The Music - three minute featurette about composing the music for the film... I liked this one
- Crew Files - these are NOT just boring text to read, it's actually 45 minutes of the crew telling about stuff all throughout filming of the movie. It's kinda cool.
Quantum of Solace, released by MGM, is available starting March 24, 2009.
