I just watched the new James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace" and I fear I am the one in need of solace. Listen, when you get kicked in the head, fall twenty flights and land on your kidney, get shot at repeatedly by automatic weapons, you get hurt. The wholesale dismissal of consequences in this move is staggering. Then there's the editing, seemingly done by stopwatch. Every 2 minutes 30 a car must blow up. Every 4 minutes and 27 seconds a sweaty troop of cleavage bounces into frame. Every 8.27 minutes Judith Dench appears looking haggard and disconsolate about her rogue blue-eyed killing machine. The cuttiness of the chases and the fights is so rapid that sequence and linearity matter not a whit. It's like the whole mess was directed and cut by an old-time Broadway choreographer but instead of "kick, kick, kick, turn, kick, turn, kick," it's "punch, grunt, axe, punch, grunt, grunt, punch."
Plot, character development, humor: zip.
Blood, gore, rape-fantasies: 1,000.
Entertainment value: void.
If you want to see a fight scene, go rent John Sturges' "Bad Day at Black Rock" and watch one-armed Spencer Tracy knock the daylights out of Ernest Borgnine. Or take five minutes and watch it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwkBYDjcUaY&feature=related
Sorry. This Bond movie sucked. But it will gross enough to pay a Citibank bonus so we're sure of another one.
Swill.
