Quantum of Solace

I have grown to dislike James Bond movies.
And I think most adult males who grew up with the Sean Connery (and, unfortunately, Roger Moore) installments have to cop to the fact that the series no longer holds quite the same mystique and enjoyable villainy that it once did.
The last time I thoroughly enjoyed a Bond film Richard Nixon was in the White House, gas was $.36 a gallon, sex was a fascinating prospect and my will to live had not been systematically crushed under the weight of the idiots with whom I share this planet.
Time is a bit of a killjoy.
And so is the contemporary approach to Bond movies.
The evil, global cabals are still around for 007 to infiltrate and destroy, but their nefarious plots are never fleshed out. They simply act as thirty minutes of filler in between the far too numerous chase scenes, the editing of which could cause seizures in a blind person.
Daniel Craig is an acceptable Bond. He does not possess the dashing handsomeness of Connery, Moore or Brosnan but his lack of debonair style is traded for a grittier vigilance. But what do I know of male attractiveness? My lover Simone sees this guy on the screen and I’ve got to put a towel under her to save the couch from staining.
Of course, she has to put up with my charade of dragging the Ghost Whisperer out as some sort of postmodern treatise on society’s belief in an afterlife to combat its psychological dread of mortality when all I really want to do is masturbate to the image of Jennifer Love Hewitt.
I’ve always found Craig and his looks more fitting to a blue collar type, as seen in his performance as a handyman in The Mother, a highly recommended film.
The problem for me with the “new” Bond films is the sheer physical impossibility of the stunts and the lack of damage Bond sustains. Yeah, he gets dinged and bloodied, but traction would be more the reality. The old Bond plots/villains were a bit more cartoonish but 007’s carcass didn’t go careening off cement walls at ninety miles per hour or make leaps from one hundred feet high only to land on the pavement with a tuck, a roll and a dismissive grunt.
Even with a healthy suspension of disbelief, the logistics of the chase scenes are just so far over the top as to be laughable. Think Peter Griffin and the chicken on Family Guy. Or the nonsense from the Bourne franchise.
There are good moments and some surprisingly fun touches however. After throwing his former comrade’s dead body in a dumpster, Bond’s female acquaintance asks if that is how he treats his friends. “He wouldn’t have cared” Bond replies cynically. An appropriate response for men who live with the constant threat of death.
Bond later enters his hotel lobby and is given a note by the receptionist. He opens it. It says, simply, “RUN”.
There’s even a lifted moment from Goldfinger where Bond’s most recent sexual triumph is found dead in his room covered not in gold, but oil. An Exxon Valdez for the promiscuous agent.
It’s all certainly viewable. The locations are exotic, the women are beautiful and the gadgetry is state of the art. But as the plots to the new Bond films become more plausible and politically expedient, the transformation of Bond from suave intellect to indestructible ninja warrior cheapens the overall effect.
Another thing I noticed lately with him. He has become a reckless vehicle thief. There is no mode of transportation this guy will not jack from enemy or bystander. Forget the loose cannon/body count stuff “M” is always onto him about. I fear that in our corporate controlled society, reactions to the preservation of property rights is what will finally be 007’s undoing.

Comments

[Fitz]

Overall you analysis is on point, and though Craig is far and away my second favorite Bond, I share many of your misgivings. Casino Royale was the most faithful-to-the-book since "From Russia With Love" and returned Bond to the believable; for all its fun "Quantum" took a step back from a renewed high standard. Bsed on some scant study, I was very impressed with the fight sequences in "Casino" as the realistic sort of brutal, effective, and ugly in-close assaults that a fomer SAS man would use (think the use of Muay Thai in the restroom and the Brazillian jiu-jitzu fatal chokeout in the stairwell). Oh would that "Quantum" had less chase and stunt, and more shadowy killings...my segue to recall that bless your heart, you cannot go a column without slapping captialism. I would have thought that you would LOVE the theft and destruction of private property by an agent from a socialist government, the sort of symbolic nod to the proles that your type regards as enlighted compassion. One longs for for the line from "Never Say Never" when Bond informs Moneypenny that he is to eliminate "all free radicals," a sentiment worth a whle pitcher of Vespers.