Posts Tagged ‘olga kurylenko’
Box office: 007 – on the hunt
Having watched all James Bond movies at least once, I probably am what people consider a fan.
Things are not that easy, however, because there are not too many 007 movies I actually like; Still, when I had the chance to see A Quantum of Solace (the second Bond with Daniel Craig) while being in Berlin a few days ago, I of course rushed to the cinema – although it was remarkably empty.
Of course I knew the trailers in advance and had some idea of what to expect. Nevertheless, I was taken by surprise by the immense speed many cuts and scenes had – thereby occasionally producing wonderfully beautiful pictures. Also, the speed has often been so high that it seemed hard to understand what was going on or to make a clear distinction between the Bond and the evil guys. It seems to me that this was part of the film’s intention. Bond isn’t the good, but empty gentleman and agent anymore, he is frightening and “out of control” at times. Of course, violence has always been part of 007, even spectacular scenes with lots of cruelty. But it always had some ironic momentum. I can not recall Bond speaking of killing as a merely technical issue. Neither I can recall Bond taking things personal. Compared to now, he tended to be some shiny, but empty sticker an many older movies.
Partly, I do like this new development, especially when it is done in such a great way we can enjoy in the best scenes of the new movie – I am, for instance, thinking of the beginning, when the hunt in the tunnels beautifully is contrasted with the scenes of the charming and seemingly normal Northern Italian countryside, adding a new and important irony to the movie and Bond’s character as well.
However, all this cannot hide the fact that the story itself must be regarded as disappointing. I probably have never seen a Bond movie whose story was so thin that the film largely had to rely on car chases and fights in order to avoid producing at least some interesting content. Sometimes it seems that the movie could have been reduced to a mere 30 minutes with the same ease as having been expanded to three hours or more.
The Bond girl (Olga Kurylenko) is a huge step backwards – she obviously has her own story, but the film does not give her the room she would need to unfold it. I do not even see her as attractive, so she can be regarded as being even less than a Bond girl from the early days. Greene (the main bad guy, played by a boring Mathieu Almaric) is no character, just a little bit cynical and trying to maximize his profit in most unethical ways. But he doesn’t have a background at all. The only one who actually has a background is Bond himself – largely because Quantum of Solace is conceived as sequel to the last Bond, Casino Royale. But it all ends up in a largely forseeable hunt for one certain, previously absolutely unknown rogue (Greene) who seems to be part of a bigger, even more mysterious organization that doesn’t even have a name. How he is connected to Vesper is not explained in a satisfying way, probably they both just have been some small fishes in the big world conspiracy that is behind everything – thus opening up a world of possibilities for a whole lot of many more sequels… Is it wishful thinking to expect that those will actually have a story that is worth to be told?
