“BOND”-ING WITH THE WORST

Movie Review: Quantum of Solace: James Bond

Rating: 1.5/5

I am a generation that grew up watching movies in Air Cool theatres ( AC was a super-luxury in just a select few theatres ). Hollywood movies would release in India at least two to three years after it’s LA premiere , and there would be such bizarre censor edits, you would see a woman taking her clothes off and on in a blink. It was , I believe, the fastest expression of the “ quickie” in our times.

James Bond, immortalized by a dapper, charmingly rugged and highly suave Sean Connery in Dr No, Thunderball, Goldfinger, Never Say Never again et al, and by the wicked humour and disarming bravado of Roger Moore in Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, A View To a Kill, Octopussy made for an absorbing, entertaining watch. We would wait for two and a half year intervals in breathless anticipation for Bond to take us to great locales, stunning women with their sensual pouts, and a maverick villain with a sinister plan for global destruction. It was always worth the wait. Yesterday, as I watched Quantum of Solace, I could not believe it that I was furiously checking my wrist watch , awaiting the end credits. It was sacrilege for a die-hard Bond fan.

Firstly, I think calling a James Bond film by a strange 1900s English family drama title, Quantum of Solace, was a terrible naming blunder. Almost everybody I know kept asking me about just what did the darn sentimental thing have to do with the slick, fast-paced existence of the British secret service agent. Search me folks, but if this was meant to showcase Bond’s emotional vulnerabilities after losing his last bed mate in Casino Royale, it sounded grotesque to say the least.

The new director, in an attempt to perhaps redefine the modern-day Bond, has committed a clear blasphemy. The film has done away with the classic background score, and the great bended knee shoot —- the hallmark of Bond at the very beginning . Even the title digital graphics and the theme song are not a patch on earlier inventiveness. Daniel Craig seems strictly adhering to No sex, we are British conduct. There is no salacious seduction, no alluring deceit, no build-up of sexual tension, the women looking remarkably insipid, despite toned bodies and pouting mouths. Oh , so sad! I hope Bond will not end up being George Michael.

The best Bond films had a genius eccentric villain, usually supported by a dangerous iconic bodyguard who protected his evil designs with religious devotion ; remember, that deadly Japanese midget in the Golden gun? He was a masterpiece in deception. This one has a French bread as a villain, and no sidekicks excepting for an overweight buffoon in cohorts. And his supposed Machiavellian mission of hoarding water seems a far-fetched issue , not really sounding consumable, despite the threat of dry-taps. He could as well have been an Indian real estate broker looking to buy cheap land in Bolivia by bribing corrupt government officials. It is a flimsy storyline, as flaky as the croissant served on Jet Airways.

The movie has a plastic plot which is just an excuse to show a poor decrepit Bolivia and Haiti in all their sordid poverty, I guess, to appeal to western audiences in Trafalgar Square so that they can say—Oh , my God! Long live the Queen!

From the unexplained mindless car-chase in the first scene to the sudden abrupt end, Daniel Craig looks so seriously intense and almost desperately grave, you wonder if he is dressed up in black suits as a perpetual stand-by to attend a formal funeral. This Bond is a brooding fellow in a state of inner turmoil , totally humorless and self-centred, the sheer boredom of which he inflicts on us with immaculate precision. And in his one bare-chested scene, he looks soft enough to be on the receiving end ( pun intended)of John Abraham’s macho six-packs if the latter really has any gay propensities. Craig is all blue eyes and facially expressionless as they come. He also happily kills at random ( more bloodshed than his predecessors) , never once faces a broken bone or even a brief capture ( which was vintage Bond), and thus deprives the movie of any thrill as he does not ever need an escape route. It is just such a shoddy predictable script. It is tragic to see the Americanisation of Bond , as he resembles a Vin Diesel clone.

And let me tell you, the scene where he drops off the plane in mid-air is not a patch on Farhan Akhtar’s Don where SRK did the same stunt with greater panache. Judi Dench as M is as flat as the pancake make-up on her pizza-round face, the one-liners bereft of any real cackle. There was not one intelligible joke in the film. No surprises. Bond has even dispensed with his celebrated “ gadget-laboratory “ where he usually encountered his life-saviours. But of course, now he does not need one.

Save your money, this movie is a brilliant bore and deserves our complete condescension or maybe as the Queen would like it, a royal rebuff. Something tells me that the Bond franchise is running out of creative ideas. And juice. Maybe they will call their next film, “The Resuscitation of Paradigm in Absolution”.

Golmaal may return. I hope James Bond does not.