Quantum of Solace (Two-Disc Special Edition) DVD Review
Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 03.24.2009
Bond returns with a vengeance, but how does he stack up on DVD?
Directed by: Marc Forster Written by: Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade
Starring: Daniel Craig - James Bond Mathieu Amalric - Dominic Greene Olga Kurylenko - Camille Montes Judi Dench - M Gemma Arterton - Strawberry Fields Jeffrey Wright - Felix Leiter Giancarlo Giannini - René Mathis Joaquin Cosío - General Medrano Jesper Christensen - Mr. White Anatole Taubman - Elvis Rory Kinnear - Bill Tanner Glenn Foster - Craig Mitchell David Harbour - Gregg Beam Tim Pigott-Smith - British Foreign Secretary Neil Jackson - Edmund Slate Simon Kassianides - Yusef
DVD Release Date: 3/24/2008 Running Time: 106 minutes
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sexual content.
In 2006, the world of James Bond was turned on its head. Realizing that somewhere along the way of the previous nine years and three films that James Bond had lost his way amongst stale plots and silly action scenes, EON Productions realized that its meal ticket franchise needed a reinvigorating. In order to do so, the people behind the franchise decided to wipe out the previous continuity and start fresh, a concept that had just recently worked in 2005 for the Batman franchise. James Bond was brought to modern times, as portrayed by Daniel Craig, and an origin story was created using the only novel EON had never adapted. Thus, in November of 2006, Casino Royale hit theaters and was an overwhelming success. The film scored well with both critics and audiences, and the film ended up as the highest-grossing Bond film to date by taking in almost $600 million worldwide. Flush with the success of the film, EON and Sony set to work on making another, the first Bond film to be a direct sequel. The film would come to be known Quantum of Solace and would feature Craig, Judi Dench and others returning to their roles from the first film. While it did not receive quite the same critical acclaim, largely due to the high bar set by the first movie, it still scored very well and managed to top Casino Royale domestically. With another Bond film now in development, Quantum of Solace now gets its bow on DVD, to bring in more faithful Bond viewers to the new direction of the franchise.
The Movie
As Quantum of Solace opens, we find ourselves in only several minutes removed from the end of Casino Royale; James Bond (Craig) is racing through the narrow streets of Siena, Italy with the mysterious Mr. White (Christenson) in his possession and several armed people looking to stop him from getting White into MI-6’s hands. After evading them in spectacular fashion, he starts to interrogate White alongside M (Dench), and learns that, as white says, the organization he belongs to “has people everywhere.” The statement is very quickly driven home and it becomes obvious to Mi-6 that they are in deeper trouble than they thought. Despite concerns that he may be unstable due to the loss of Vesper Lynd at the end of the last movie, M has no other option than to send Bond back out into the field to track down a lead on the organization, which is known as Quantum. The secret agent goes on a tear, encountering Dominic Greene (Amalric), an environmentally-friendly businessman with darker intentions, and Russian/Bolivian beauty Camille Montes (Kurylenko), a woman with her own agenda of vengeance and whom Green calls “damaged goods.” When Bond and Camille decide to work together in order to take Quantum down, they find themselves running afoul of several intelligence agencies. These agencies include even MI-6, where M is growing more and more worried about Bond’s vendetta-like behavior, and the CIA, where old friend Felix Leiter (Wright) is finding himself at odds between his agency and his loyalties. With everyone closing in on Bond, he finds himself turning to old friends like Rene Mathis (Giannini) to complete his mission and find some closure in revenge.
There’s no doubt after the enormous success of Casino Royale that expectations were at an all-time high for the Bond franchise. In order to meet those expectations, screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were kept on board to write the script, with Paul Haggis, who polished up the Royale script, coming in after to do a rewrite. The trio does an excellent job of maintaining complete continuity from the first script as would be expected, and progress the characterization of Bond in a very impressive way. This is a darker and more complex story than the last one, taking Bond deeper into the world from which he comes before he has a chance to heal the wounds of his last journey. While the story can feel a bit too busy at times, with characters introduced and quickly discarded in order to move the 106 minute plot forward, the writers do the smart thing by sticking to the mission statement established in the first film; taking Bond and placing him within the complexities of the modern world without the kitsch and often-tacky elements of the last few Pierce Brosnan Bond films. The story progresses along naturally, although the first act seems a little jarring and hard to follow with the amount of chase and fight scenes that have been packed in to draw the viewer into the film, and without knowing the events that occur within Casino Royale it would be remarkably easy to get lost. For those who are familiar with the first movie however, Quantum presents a fitting second chapter to the new Bond story.
In keeping with the deeper complexity of the film, Daniel Craig steps things up a notch from his already-superb portrayal of the secret agent in Royale. Where in that first film Craig portrayed Bond with a more thuggish quality than his predecessors did, in Quantum he submerges himself in his duty, letting the rage that he’s carrying from the end of the first film simmer and leak out once the chips are down and combat has begun. Letting his eyes do most of the emoting, Craig lets his Bond move with a coiled purpose, like a wounded animal with a single goal in mind and pity anyone who gets in his way. To his credit Craig doesn’t force himself into just the one level of emotion, as he finds himself more at ease in the “higher class” portions of the film when he dons his tuxedo and infiltrates parties and operas. Still, even then Bond has that lean, hungry look, and Craig deserves a lot of recognition for keeping that mindset to the character without ever overplaying it, a tough line for any actor to walk. James Bond has definitely become a secret agent for the modern day, and he’s done so without losing any of his power as a character which is quite an accomplishment.
It certainly helps Craig that, much like with Royale, he has a very able cast surrounding him. Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright and Giancarlo Giannini have all returned to reprise their roles and lend their considerable talents to the production, talent which is very well-utilized. Dench has a bit more to do in Quantum than she did in Royale as M has to fend off sources looking to take Bond down from within while trying to keep the nearly-rogue agent on track. She does this all quite ably and provides some of the better one-lines of the film; however, in the actress’s able hands they never seem like sound-bite one-liners, and coming from her they seem like perfectly natural parts of the script. While her time in Bond’s direct presence is relatively low, she still has a definite chemistry with Craig that makes for an amazing dynamic, one that is both adversarial and very mentor/student-ish—or, as Bond sardonically mentions at one point, mother/son-like. While some originally questioned the strange choice to keep Dench when they rebooted the series, it is a decision that has paid off brilliantly well and to imagine anyone else but her in the role of M is almost heretical at this point. Wright and Giannini have less screen time than they did in Royale but make the most of it, doing their best to act as allies—kind of—to the MI-6 man on a mission. Mathieu Amalric does some good work as Dominic Greene, but much like Le Chiffre in the first film he doesn’t quite seem a match for Bond, being too obviously a lower man on the totem pole; this is a flaw of the character and not the actor, and Amalric does do excellent work. In the role of the “Bond girls,” Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton excel. Kurylenko represents the new style of Bond girl, the woman who is as much an partner of Bond’s as anyone else, and she does it quite well by affecting the same sort of damaged and barley-repressed anger that Craig does. It provides an interesting mirror for Craig’s performance and the two work together very well. Arterton, for her part, represents a throwback to the old-style Bond girl, with even her name—Strawberry Fields—being an homage to those older films. She definitely fulfills the role ably, and her character provides a very nice homage to one of the more iconic images of the first Bond movies.
While the film has a lot of strengths, there are some weaknesses. Foremost among these are the action scenes, which are shot by director Marc Forster and cinematographer Roberto Schaefer as if to echo the Bourne films. Forster is primarily known as a dramatic director and not an action director, and it shows quite well in the different scenes as he seems to willing to rely on shortcuts and the Bourne-like quick cuts and shaky camera angles to put the action pieces together; the result is that several of the action scenes are tough to follow, though on the smaller screen of a DVD and home theater system it is not as much of a problem as it is on the big screen. Forster also struggles with the pacing early on, unable to settle down with so many switches between story and action, and it isn’t until the second act that he is able to find his footing and let things move on. From that point forward he is much more confident and he lenses scenes with a sure hand, guiding the viewer deftly through the plot.
Several other Bond elements are present of course, and for the most part they work very well. The score by David Arnold, who has worked on the last five Bond films, is of typically high quality and keeps things moving along quite well. The adjunct to his score is the opening song, “Another Way to Die” as performed by Alicia Keys and Jack White. The song is a step up from Royale’s song “You Know My Name” by Chris Cornell, evoking thoughts of the old Bond while keeping things firmly within a modern mentality. Perhaps more than Royale did, this feels like a Bond film because the elements we remember are there and Forster doesn’t have the onus of reinventing Bond; he has the design to work with and he gets to take it from there. He may stumble once or twice but he never comes close to falling, and if his only flaw is hewing too close to Jason Bourne then he’s done an excellent job indeed.
Film Rating: 8.0
The Video
MGM is presenting Quantum of Solace in the film’s original 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio. As might be expected for a film of this caliber, the video transfer is a high-quality one which shows very few issues. The film shows proper delineation throughout and the colors are rendered quite nicely. The film only shows a very few noticeable signs of compression, even during the frenetic action scenes, and anti-aliasing is never a problem. It’s an excellent transfer which gives Bond fans the visual experience that they deserve. One negative in the visual experience, although it is strictly a film choice and not a DVD flaw, is the occasionally hard-to-read subtitles for foreign languages, which are yellow and small against light backgrounds.
Video Rating: 8.5
The Audio
There are four audio tracks on this DVD: an English 5.1 DTS and English, French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital tracks, with subtitles offered in English and Spanish. Much like the video transfer, the audio tracks are very high in quality. The DTS one in particular is impressive, offering the full Bond action experience with gun blasts, explosions and car crashes coming through loud and clear. The sound is balanced nicely across the channels, with dialogue never difficult to hear over the excellent David Arnold score or the sound effects. All in all, MGM has given us a very technically-sound DVD and they deserve some kudos for that.
Audio Rating: 9.0
The Packaging
The Quantum of Solace DVD is housed within your standard snap case with a slip case featuring the poster of Daniel Craig with his machine gun walking across the desert with a burning building in the background. It’s simple, stylistic and effective as a cover image. The menus are similarly stylized and visually appealing, representing the computerized table shown at MI-6 in the movie that has sort of a Star Trek touch-screen-like look to it; they are very easy to navigate and make for a nice deviation from the standard menus of film clips over static menu options.
Packaging Rating: 8.0
Special Features
The most obvious piece missing from the special features is a commentary track, which is highly unfortunate as it would have been great to hear Forster, Craig, Kurylenko and others talking about the various aspects of this film. One can assume that it’s being saved for the eventual double-dip DVD later down the line.
Music Video: (4:31) One of two special features on Disc One along with the trailers, this is the music video for Jack White and Alicia Key’s Bond theme “Another Way To Die.” As music videos go, this is a pretty weak one as White and keys look about as excited as a pair of mannequins, and that’s not even getting into Keys’s garish make-up or White’s bloated look. The song is quite a good one, but the video finds itself seriously lacking.
Trailers: (4:15) Both theatrical trailers are included, the first one that introduced the chilling (and thrilling) line “The first thing you should know about us is, we have people everywhere,” and the second, somewhat longer one that got more into the story. They’re both excellently-cut trailers that did a lot to hype the movie before its release and it’s always nice to see such promotional work included on the DVD.
Bond on Location: (24:47) The second disc, which is purely special features, consists completely of featurettes and this is the first one. Done in a documentary format complete with voiceover narration, it briefly talks about the success of Casino Royale and how the plot of that film leads directly into this one. They take the film through a detailed journey of each of the beautiful locales used in the film, and we get comments from Daniel Craig, Marc Forster and Assistant Director Michael Lerman, Production Designer Dennis Gassner, casting director Debbie McWilliams and others talking about the challenges of scouting the locations, setting up and then shooting. The short takes us into several locations: Colon and Panama City, Panama which served as Bolivia; San Felipe, Mexico where they did the plane fight; Santiago, Chile for the desert scene; Bregenz, Austria for the opera house; Italy for the opening car chase; and Siena, Italy for filming the horse race; and finally back to England for the end sequence. This is an incredibly detailed short that covers a lot of information about the shooting process and manages to stay engaging and interesting throughout.
Start of Shooting: (2:56) This very short featurette has Marc Forster talking about the intimidating task of topping Casino Royale before moving on to show pieces of the first days of shooting. There’s some behind the scenes shots and some comments from Daniel Craig, Forster and producer Michael G. Wilson, though a brief portion of the Craig bit is duplicated in the “On Location” featurette. There are some shots of Craig training and rehearsing with the jet boat as well. This is pleasant enough, but too short to have anything of real value to learn.
On Location: (3:13) On the surface, this is a very extraneous piece as it covers the location, which was obviously already done in the twenty-four minute featurette. This features the increasingly annoying comment about how the locations “are like a character in the film,” spoken here by Forster, before it focuses on the aerial fight scene that was well-covered in the longer bit, then moves on to touch on the other spots. This is completely and totally unnecessary considering that there may not be a single shot that isn’t already in the longer piece, and one has to wonder why this was included at all.
Olga Kurylenko and the Boat Chase: (2:14) This short little bit starts off with Marc Forster talking about how the role of the Bond girl has changed to the point that Camille is almost more of a counterpart to Bond then simply a sex symbol. Olga Kurylenko talks a little bit about her character and looking forward to the action scenes, and then we see a brief snippet of her training before they move to the primary subject, that of the boat chase. Kurylenko comes off quite well in this piece, although outside of her speaking moments there’s nothing of too much substance here; some discussion of the actual staging of the boat fight from her perspective would have been good.
Director Marc Forster: (2:45) Daniel Craig kicks this off by talking about the high expectations of this film following the success of the last, and what kind of pressure that puts on the director. We then switch to Forster, hearing him wax philosophically about his filmmaking process. There’s a few interesting moments, with the actors talking about how they appreciated him being a story-oriented director and not just an action guy, but there is a lot of fluff in this particular piece as well and that fluff very nearly buries the interesting and informative stuff.
The Music: (2:37) This is your fairly standard behind the scenes featurette about the film score, truncated down to under three minutes. We see shots of the orchestra performing the music, which switches to David Arnold talking about his approach. He gives a few good discussion points about how he came upon the score and the feel he was trying to convey, and unlike the other short featurettes this doesn’t ever switch to self-congratulatory fluff even when discussion moves to Jack White and Alicia Keys’s work on the theme song. White and Keys mostly talk about their different styles merging together. This is by far the best of the two to three minute pieces.
Crew Files: (46:15) The other truly large featurette, or rather set of featurettes, is this category. It consists of forty-two separate video blogs from across the spectrum of people involved with the production, from producer Michael G. Wilson, extras casting director Ana Endara, stunt pilot Cliff Fleming and unit nurse Jeanie Udall to art director Chris Lowe, actor Anatole Taubman, effects supervisor Chris Corbould and singer Alicia Keys. They get up to two minutes in length and have each of them talking about what they do and how they contribute to the process of the film. This is a great piece to show the wide spectrum of jobs it takes to make a huge production like this, and amazingly none of the entries come in boring or dull. This isn’t the kind of special feature you see every day and it’s a welcome change from the standard EPK stuff.
Special Features Rating: 7.0
The 411: Daniel Craig's second turn as James Bond in Quantum of Solace anchors the movie exceptionally well and allows it to steer a muddier, darker path through unknown waters. With director Marc Forster handling the moral conflict of the script quite ably and a powerful supporting cast that includes Judi Dench, Olga Kurylenko, Jeffrey Wright and Mathieu Amalric, Craig is able to let Bond progress quite naturally from the end of Casino Royale into this film and take the viewer along on a great ride despite a little stumbling early on with overly hectic action scenes. A great audio and video transfer help the DVD transfer nicely and while some much-wanted features like a commentary track are missing, the featurettes on the second disc provide a lot of good information. Bond enthusiasts who don't want to double-dip may wish to wait for the eventual deluxe edition, but for most fans this will provide a very good addition to their secret agent collection.
