Daniel Craig is back as James Bond, and he's not happy.
In Quantam of Solace, director Marc Forster's first foray into the 007 franchise, Bond remains noticeably stricken from his painful love affair with the now-deceased, double-crossing Vesper Lynd. "M" has her agent on constant surveillance and is ready to ground him at the slightest hint of professional weakness. He is a young double-0, after all.
Craig is once again solid, confirming his casting for 2006's series overhaul Casino Royale. He's tough, but vulnerable, not afraid to cap a room full of enemies, wreak countless structural and artistic damage, and then be haunted by what he's done. Bond's blossoming insomnia is a refreshing shift from the happy-go-lucky persona employed most recently by Pierce Brosnan. With a growing number of personal issues, it's worth wondering how disturbed young Bond grew up to be a beyond cool superspy.
Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) makes an appealing, sniveling villain, but he feels like such a minor threat in the world of Bond baddies. His threat via influence is real, but he is far from imposing in person. Greene's pun-friendly environmental doomsday project is a timely plot device and audiences would be lucky if the rest of the film was that easy to follow. Instead, it's not, and if viewers don't know Casino Royale front-to-back before seeing the latest Bond installment, the plethora of references will cause confusion instead of intrigue. Perhaps having Paul Haggis as a screenwriter isn't such a good idea after all.
The action, always the series' main attraction, is there, but it feels poorly shot and edited, especially compared to Casino Royale. Notable sequences include sneakily ID-ing suspects at an opera, a high-octane boat chase through a crowded harbor, and escaping from a doomed cargo plane. Still, several scenes have a distinct "Jason Bourne was here" feel, and in a poor rip-off kind of way. All of these weaknesses point toward Forster and a simple explanation: the director of Finding Neverland is simply not adept in the art of action films.
Craig is a good enough Bond that he deserves more support. With the Bourne trilogy and the previous Bond film, big-budget action features have catapulted into unexplored territory. In Quantum of Solace, Forster & Co. are merely following a map instead of blazing their own trail.