Quantum of Solace Catching Oscar's GoldenEye

TopTenReviews.com calls Quantum of Solace an action/adventure "art film". Empire, a British film magazine claims it's the bloodiest Bond film ever. The MPAA gave Quantum of Solace a PG 13 for "intense sequences of violence and action and some sexual content" and the retooled, jazzed up new age James Bond theme which you can listen to at YouTube.com will take many by suprise. All in all, Daniel Craig's second outing as the most well known secret agent is something your not going to forget for a while after you see it. And let's face up to it, it's a James Bond movie, and the last one was very good. Your going see it.

Is it any good? By all early indications Quantum of Solace will give you your money's worth and them some. An early review of the full film from the British tabloid Sun UK says this...- Quantum of Solace will kick the living daylights out of any rival action-hero franchises. The New York Times adds the almost incredible words that Quantum of Solace is provoking quite a bit of Oscar talk. Oscar talk for a James Bond movie?

A retooled, revamped Bond was brought to the screen in 2006 as a gritty, much more flawed and much more human secret agent. His job in Her Majesty's Secret Service was clarified. He's an assassin, an egotistical but self-aware gunman who doesn't always get the big picture.

The chances that the James Bond people took in remoulding James Bond for 21st century sensibilities paid off at the box office. With Daniel Craig as James Bond, 2006's Casino Royale was an huge hit with the fans. Even's Craig's blond hair and edgy looks had no adverse effect. In fact Casino Royale made more money than any film in the James Bond franchise history. And Craig is already signed to do two more Bond films.

Quantum of Solace follows down the same road. It's shaping up to be a much more glamourous, jet-set version of the hard hitting adventure action realism of The Bourne Ultimatum. It's reviewer at the Sun says Quantum of Solace isn't as ground breaking as Casino Royale was but as stated above, it's going to kick the living daylights out of the action/adventure competition for a while. It's also, by the way, the shortest Bond film ever made coming in at 105 minutes long.

Quantum of Solace is actually almost a sequel. The movie begins in time one hour after Bond has introduced himself to Mr. White at the very conclusion of Casino Royale by putting a bullet into his kneecap.

There are no comedic sexual double-entendres in Quantum of Solace. Even Q and the trademark dialogue line, "The name's Bond, James Bond", have been slashed in this post-modern Bond movie. And Bond's foe in Quantum of Solace is no evil-doer out to take over the world, rather he's a billionaire South American who hides behind environmental campaigns who wishes to control a country's water supply for financial gain.

Quantum of Solace starts with a car chase scene (with Bond in his Aston Martin, pictured with this article) that Sun UK thinks one of the best car chases ever filmed. One stunt driver had head injuries after crashing a car into a stone wall during filming the cliff-top chase, and another driver narrowly escaped drowning after skidding off a road into a lake. With the cliff-top highways of Italy as a background the dangerous stunts were worth it.

People are wondering why the producers chose Quantum of Solace as the movies title. It's a complicated title and a pain in the Aston Martin to remember. But hard to remember also means hard to forget, and the title does have a very logical tie-in to the film's plot.

In Quantum of Solace, Bond has dinner with the Governor of the Bahamas who tells Bond the story of a young man in the diplomatic corp. who marries a flight attendant. After a few years the wife becomes disaffected with her marriage and has a lurid and sensational affair. Her affair has disasterous effects on her husband's diplomatic career. Over the course of a year the husband takes his revenge, methodically destroying his wife both emotionally, and financially until her life is in ruins.

The Governor tells Bond that a Quantum of Solace is smallest amount of human compassion for another person that can possibly exists. With that quantum of solace for your partner a relationship can survive. Without it, when one no longer cares even about the simple humanity of their partner, the relationship is over.

Through the story Bond realizes that there is no one in the world who has even a Quantum of Solace for him. Bond gets depressed. He starts killing a lot in his quest for revenge for the killer of the woman who loved him, Vesper Lynd. You don't want to be around James Bond when he's depressed. Bond kills so many guys that M, played again by Judi Dench, at one point has to revoke Bond's license to kill.

Daniel Craig himself took eight stitches in his face after a fight scene shown later in the film and reportedly, he had the top of a finger sliced off filming another action sequence. The action in Quantum of Solace is far more physical than the earlier Bond films and far less reliant on high-tech gadgets. Although Bond still manages to destroy dozens of cars, two airplanes, a slew of boats and a helicopter. And the exotic locals are all present and accounted for. Quantum of Solace takes bond from England to Italy to South America to Austria, back to Italy, over to the Caribbean and then to Russia.

The Sun says Quantum of Solace is a great entertainment and makes no hint of a post Casino Royale let down. Action adventure films don't usually catch a lot of Oscar attention. This one has. Expect something special.

Quantum of Solace opens in Europe on October 31, 2008, and will open here in the US November 14, 2008.