Originally posted on 6/4/16
First things first--much of the editing in QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008) is horrible. I mean, it's shockingly bad. Sometimes damn near incomprehensible, in fact.
If you're going to stage elaborate and expensive action setpieces, you don't chop the footage into confetti and blast it at the audience with a salad shooter. Imagine the best scenes in CASINO ROYALE done in this style. It would've been a jumbled mess, too, instead of a generally recognized success.
I'd love to see the raw footage of this film given over to someone who knows what to do with it. Imagine it in the hands of original Bond editor Peter Hunt, who helped create the series' style.
Bond does have a quick fling with MI6 field agent Miss Fields (Gemma Arterton, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED). We never learn her first name, but being that she's a redhead and this is a Bond film, it isn't hard to imagine.
At any rate, subsequent viewings of QUANTUM OF SOLACE, during which I no longer have to spend all my time figuring out what's going on, have caused me to grow increasingly fond of it.
Some sequences, such as the airplane setpiece, the various hotel scenes, and the explosive desert finale, are quite well done. There's a nice scene between Bond and his CIA friend Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) in a seedy bar, and a reunion with Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini, HANNIBAL) from CASINO ROYALE which is sublime.
We get what may be the first "breaking the fourth wall" moment in an Eon Bond film [not counting the one in the pre-titles sequence for ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE] when 007 is pulled over by Bolivian cops and ordered to open his trunk. Bond glances right at us for half a tick and mutters aloud, "Now why would he want me to do that?"
Plus, we finally get to see what all the hostility between Bond and M (Judi Dench) has been leading up to. With her faith in everyone else around her eroding, and the supposed good guys making Faustian deals with the bad guys left and right (this is the most politically pessimistic of all the Bond films), M realizes that Bond is the one person she can depend on because he's the only one who doggedly insists on actually trying to do the right thing.
"He's my agent," she tells her aide Tanner, "and I trust him." And Bond proves that he's been worthy of this trust all along. It's a cathartic moment, one of the most important of the entire Daniel Craig era.
But best of all...we finally get to see the return of NUDE SILHOUETTE BABES in the title sequence!
Not all that crazy about the theme song, though. Here's one I came up with, which I think is much more Bond-like:
GREENE FINGER (to the tune of "Goldfinger" by John Barry, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley)
Greene Finger
He's the man, the man with Polanski's puss
An evil wuss
Thus, a mean finger
Buying up, the stuff that's worth more than gold
His water's cold
H2O he will pour up your nose
And no telling what else, I suppose
For an oily girl, knows when he's dipped her
It's the dip of death, from mister
Greene Finger
Beckons you to jump in his lake of sin
But don't dive in
Stay away from his desert abode
If you go there, you just might explode
When he catches you, trying to sneak out
He will grab an axe, and freak out
Greene Finger
Pretty girls, you're not what excites him so
It's H2O
He loves H2O, H2O
He loves H2O, H2O
H2 OOOOOOOOOOOOOH
