Sunday, May 31, 2009

Quantum of Solace

It seems I can never see these things in the theater, but I'm glad to have watched Quantum of Solace at all. This one wasn't long enough. It could have gone on another hour and I would have been perfectly happy, though there were a few moments that felt ham fisted.

There are two bond women in this film. The main one, Camille, forms a bond with er, Bond, through their mutual vendettas. Her family was killed, and she's spent her life planning to make the man who killed them pay. Bond is still haunted by Vesper, though he affects not to care. Yet he avenges her death, in a way, by the end. Or at least makes some sort of peace with it. The second Bond woman, Strawberry Fields, exists chiefly to relieve Bond's sexual tension. This leads to one of the few amusing scenes in the film (the others are with Mathis). Through the rest of it, Bond is one efficient killing machine. There's an action scene about every five minutes in this. (Yesssss!)

The film also makes some reasoned, cynical social commentary. We're running out of oil, and instead of addressing that with real efforts at making sustainable fuel, we do the usual and fake it. The man personifying this is Dominic Greene. He's, in his way, worse than LeChiffre. 

I'm not sure I liked the score, but I will need to watch this a second time to pay more attention to it. I think action scenes, generally, need a lot of syncopation (chords and notes that are accented between beats) in order to be exciting. It sounded to me like many of the action scenes were played right on the beat, which made them less exciting to listen to (and predictable) and detracted from what was on screen. 

All in all, good, rousing fun. But smart. Very smart.

3 comments:

fairyhedgehog said...

It's interesting about the score. I don't know enough to know what's working, or isn't, in the music to a film. I only know if it seems to work for me.

Stacy said...

That's about all anyone knows, FHH. I'm learning there are no experts in this business. : )

Robin B. said...

You know, I liked that movie as well, but I don't remember the music. Which, for a Bond film, ISN'T a good thing, huh?