In the film, "Quantum" is revealed as the name of the evil organization that was responsible for the events of Casino Royale, but also the film is about Bond chasing "solace" for the death of Vesper in that film. It isn't spelled out, but one presumes he manages to find the smallest possible amount of it.
As I think I said back when I reviewed Spectre, I've seen all the Daniel Craig films in the theater. Thus, I have two contexts to think about each of them: how they fit into the other Daniel Craig films, and how they fit into the Bond films more broadly. I wasn't a big fan of Spectre as a Craig film when it originally came out, for example, but as a Bond film, I found it good fun on rewatching. I feel like the opposite happened here. I know this is a minority view, but I remember really enjoying Quantum of Solace when I saw it in the theater; on rewatching, I found it interesting how it played with Bond tropes but also it feels less like a Bond film and more like a generic action film of the Bourne era.
Okay, as a Craig film first. The movie opens literally an hour after the events of Casino Royale; the guy Bond went to confront at the end of Casino Royale, Mr. White, is stuffed into Bond's trunk when this film begins. Bond spends the film trying to get to grips with the plans of Quantum, who were behind Casino Royale, and spends the film trying to come to terms with the death of Vesper. This all worked for me when Casino Royale was indeed my previous Bond film, and I had seen it just a couple years prior, but in this sequence, Casino Royale was over seven years ago, nineteen Bond films back! I think some of it still lands okay, but it does feel like the movie is trading off your memory of the first one for your emotional investment here. Thank God for composer Daniel Arnold's occasional invocation of his beautiful "Vesper" theme. The one part that really didn't work for me was the return appearance of Mathis; Mathis has no real reason to go with Bond, so he clearly only does it because he's a familiar character who can die to prove the situation is serious, as in this new continuity, Bond doesn't really have any old friends.
On the other hand, it's pretty interesting how this one plays with tropes and expectations of Bond films, which is something I hadn't clocked watching it in its original context. Bond is pretty charmless for the first half, and also not particularly clever; as M points out repeatedly, he keeps killing his leads. There's a bit where he hijacks a boat driven by Olga Kurylenko's agent Camille so that he save her life. In a Roger Moore or Sean Connery film, she would get mad at him, but then they would flirt, he would save her life, and then they would sleep together. (This is basically what does happen in a very similar scene in Licence to Kill.) Here, she gets winged during the gun battle and falls unconscious, and he just ditches her! (We actually thought she was dead at first, but we may not have been watching too closely, as we were also folding laundry; she pops up again thirty minutes later, evidently fine.) This is "not your father's Bond," made very plain in a pretty clever way.
(The Goldfingeresque death of Agent Fields comes across as pretty gratuitous, though, and not really in character.)
On the other hand, I struggled with the action. Casino Royale had some big extravagant action sequences in its first sixty minutes, before the casino plot actually kicks in, but then the main body of the film is much more restrained than the old Bond films. But I felt like Quantum of Solace, having removed the over-the-top goofy action of a Roger Moore film and also lacking the intensity of Casino Royale, didn't know what to replace it with, so there were a lot of just pretty generic action sequences that could come from any 2000s action flick. There's no humor and no intensity. It did improve for me with the final sequence—the villain lair is visually striking—but even that lacked the climactic oomph it needed.
In trying to figure out what a non–Cold War, non-SPECTRE villain might want, Quantum of Solace comes up with a pretty clever answer. Mr. Greene, this film's Quantum representative, is supposedly an environmentalist, but secretly he's after oil... but that's another cover, and he's really after capturing water and then selling it back to impoverished countries at high premiums. This is clever... but it's also a bit too complicated, or at the very least, under-explained. It also means that the stakes don't really escalate. I mean, giving thirsty people their water back is noble, but it's not saving the West from Communism, you know? I do think the next film overreacted in its course correction, but it's little wonder that Quantum isn't even mentioned in Skyfall.
I feel like the filmmakers really missed a trick. Any movie where Bond discovers the villains have built a dam for nefarious purposes really ought to end with the dam exploding! That would have given us a great climax.
So all in all, it's okay stuff. Probably the worst Daniel Craig film, but Craig had an above-average run. Better than Moonraker—there's your pull quote.
Other Notes:
- In this part of my review, I often comment on all the recurring character actors, but at this point in the Daniel Craig chronology, there's no Moneypenny yet and no Q! Judi Dench does a good job with generic material as M; I did really like the moment where she lets him get on with the job because she knows that if Bond's seemingly gone rogue, he has a good reason for it. Rory Kinnear puts in his first appearance as M's chief of staff, Bill Tanner, and ohmigosh, he looks like such a baby. (Actually, so does Daniel Craig. Somehow this movie came out thirteen years ago!)
- It's not exactly a competition to be "best Felix," but Jeffrey Deaver wins it by a country mile.
- The bit where Bond goes to the opera isn't much of an action sequence per se, but it does have good modern vibe to it, and is visually interesting.
- The theme song is not the worst one, but it is much less memorable than this delightful fake one I have always loved:"The Suantum of Qolace. Is that how it goes?"
- Of course, this isn't the end of my film Bond-a-thon. Even if the books have come to an end, I will go through all the movies not based on books in release order. That means next up is the second Timothy Dalton film, License to Kill; then all the Pierce Brosnan ones; and then finally a couple other Daniel Craig ones, Skyfall and No Time to Die. (If you've seen No Time to Die, you know that I could have slotted it in as a second You Only Live Twice adaptation, but it didn't exist back when I read that book in early 2020.) So only seven to go!
- Casino Royale
- Dr. No
- From Russia with Love
- For Your Eyes Only
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service
- Thunderball
- The Living Daylights
- Spectre
- You Only Live Twice
- Goldfinger
- Quantum of Solace
- The Spy Who Loved Me
- Moonraker
- The Man with the Golden Gun
- Octopussy
- Never Say Never Again
- A View to a Kill
- Live and Let Die
- Diamonds Are Forever
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