What has made Daniel Craig so appealing as James Bond is his willingness to take the franchise to extremely uncharted waters. Even more than he did in Casino Royale, Craig gives us a 007 who is driven, focused, intense, and also impulsive, ruthless, and murderous. In this film, you can add pissed-off to the list. Starting literally minutes after Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace sees Bond still bitter and reeling from the death of his lover Vesper Lynd, seeking out brutal revenge on the terrorist organization responsible, and using his instincts, brute strength, and itchy trigger finger to tear it apart piece by piece.
To understand this new Bond, you have to go back to the source - the Ian Fleming novels, which present Bond as a murderous, government-trained instrument of death. The thrill of watching Quantum of Solace is to witness Craig, the instrument, play his seductive dance of death. This is a short Bond film, playing barely over 100 minutes, and yet during each minute of the film, Craig's mesmerizing screen presence simultaneously haunts the screen and sets it aflame. You won't be able to take your eyes off him.
A stern warning to those of you reading this review: This is not a Bond film for those who think Roger Moore was the best 007. Not since Timothy Dalton fed Benicio Del Toro into a cocaine grinder in License to Kill has the franchise been this gritty and dark. But what has made Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace so exhilarating is their almost gleeful willingness to wash out over 40 years of repetitive formula and create a new Bond that we have never seen before but always knew was lurking beneath the surface.
Craig does not play Bond as full-out sociopath - he is actually a model of suave, restrained composure. It is when Craig allows that cold-blue stare to linger that we see the tiger inside yearning to break out and maul. In Quantum of Solace, Craig is an agent of revenge simultaneously ennobled by Vesper's death and vilified by his own murderous impulses that overflow and spew out torrents of rage all over his enemies, not to mention the audience too.
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