one in five billion

SPOILER ALERT: Read no further if you haven’t seen seen the movie!

OK, with sufficient warnings out of the way, here goes… At the end of the film of the same name, Zoolander established the “The Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good And Who Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too”. I imagine that Marc Forster (director of Quantum of Solace) must have attended “The Michael Bay Center For Directing Action Sequences For Kids Who Can’t Concentrate On Shots Lasting Longer Than Two Seconds”. I had both read, and heard from others who had already seen the film, that one should be prepared for some headache-inducing cinematography whenever action is occurring on screen. Well, my eyes did hurt a bit after flick back and forth trying to follow things on the screen, but generally I coped OK. This was really my major gripe, now for some more items to mention:

What I liked

• The opening car chase. When you could tell what was going on, it was pretty good. Not one of the great cinematic car chases, but very solid.
• Daniel Craig. No not to look at (maybe if I was a girl. Or liked boys). He’s by far the best Bond in my mind, even after only two films. With the other Bonds, I never got the feeling that they could actually be 00 Agents. Craig ‘keeps it real’, but still brings enough style and dry wit to make the character Bond, not Bourne.
• Judi Dench. Again, not to look at. She’s one of those actors who for me, nails it every time, and I totally believe her (yes, even in The Chronicles of Riddick…).
• The locations. Nothing beats filming on location in exotic (or at least semi-exotic) places. The last act of the film, set in the desert, was quite good in particular.
• The setup for the future. Bond needs villains, but over-the-top villains aren’t going to work for me with the new Bond style. The QUANTUM organisation gives a big enough threat for MI6 (and thus Bond) to deal with, and gives scope for individual players in the organisation to be the ‘big bad’ for a given film. I look forward to more use of QUANTUM in the future.
• The score. David Arnold again impressed me with a reasonably subdued, yet mature orchestration for a Bond film.

What I didn’t like

• Only one car chase! I would have dearly loved to have seen another Aston Martin getting a workout.
• Pushing the bounds of believability. I know Bond has never been that based in reality, but Casino Royale set a new feel for a more realistic Bond, with less camp and crazy stunts. Some have decried this in a ‘it’s not Bond’ kind of way, but I’m all for it. There’s certainly a spot for crazy stunts, but I felt that the line of believability was definitely reached in this film. Please don’t push it any further.
• The Bond Girls. Sure, Olga Kurylenko did a good job as the ‘damaged goods’ girl out for revenge, but Gemma Arterton’s performance, to me, seemed forced and very ‘acting’. More importantly, I like my Bond girls to have more of the traditional voluptuous look going on (like Eva Green from the last movie), not the current ’skinny chick’ fad. To be fair, Kurylenko’s face is pretty enough (but Arterton doesn’t do anything for me).

My rating: 7/10 (it gets an extra point by virtue of being a Bond film. To compare, I would give Casino Royale an 8.5)