A QUANTUM OF ENTERTAINMENT

Paging Eva Green! One would not have thought that one Bond girl more or less would have made so much difference, but as A Quantum of Solace makes clear, the difference between an exciting, groundbreaking Bond movie and a satisfactory placeholder in the series is not merely in the Bond, but in the lady.  It’s true, as some many have said, that Daniel Craig brings a weight to Bond that no one since Sean Connery possessed, and not even Connery made it seem that Bond had any kind of inner life. But what really made the Bond character work was his early scenes with Vesper Lind, the long, languid lady from the Exchequer sent to keep an eye on the money Bond was charged with putting to good geostrategic use on the poker table. Her skepticism caused him to work a little harder–consider the bad joke he made when he said he had registered her at the hotel under the name of Broadchest, and her somewhat manfactured umbrage that amused him so–and when this beautiful and intelligent woman warms to Bond, it endows him with more depth and interest than he ever previously enjoyed. Unfortunately, there is no similar person in the new film. Olga Kurylenko is too distant and Gemma Arterton is too lightweight, and so the assets we have are Craig and Judi Dench reprising their acts, a very fine reptile of a villian in Mathieu Amalric, and a lot of state of the art mayhem. (Maybe too state of the art: director Marc Forster overcuts his action sequences to the degree that you can’t follow the conflict, something that never happens with Paul Greengrass, the maestro of the last two Bourne movies and United 93, the best action director since forever.) Giving Bond some genuine emotional jeopardy in Casino Royale was significant, but right now, Bond is too similar to Jason Bourne; the challenge in the next Bond film will be to find a way to restore and reinterpret his typical wit and verve.